They recently set a record at the Daily Bread Food Bank but no one’s happy about it.

“Last year for the first time ever there were more than a million food bank visits in Toronto,” Neil Hetherington, CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank told volunteers at the annual Thanksgiving food sort at the organization’s warehouse on New Toronto Street.

“The need is up,” Hetherington said.

Some sixty per cent of people who receive food bank food have some sort of disability, Hetherington said in an interview, while many more have precarious employment and are patching things together with multiple jobs.

There is a particularly high demand right now for donations of high protein items like peanut butter and tuna.

“Were also very appreciative of vegetables and dried pasta,” Hetherington said. “Rice is nice as well.”

The food bank attracts some 10,000 volunteers a year, and they come from all ages and backgrounds, Hetherington said.

“There’s Toronto coming out,” Hetherington said. “We get a real mixture of everybody.”

Hetherington encouraged them to take selfies and share photos on social media in hopes of attracting more donations and volunteers.

There was also a drone overhead in the warehouse, taking video of the volunteers at work.

Hetherington praised a provincial tax credit that allows farmers and greenhouse operators to donate unsold fresh fruits and vegetables.

“That has allowed us to dramatically increase the amount of vegetables we are sending out,” Hetherington said. “Forty per cent of food waste happens at the farm.”

Hetherington said he’d love to see a similar tax credit for food donations on a federal level.

“It just makes radical common sense,” Hetherington said.

Hetherington said his life was profoundly changed thirty years ago, when he was sixteen years old and he heard former Daily Bread CEO Gerard Kennedy speak in a church basement about the importance of striving for social justice.

“That speech was a moment I’d never forget,” Hetherington said. “It had a profound impact on my life,”

Toronto Mayor John Tory is a frequent volunteer at the food bank and he praised the kids present on Sunday for giving back to the community.

“I want to say this to the kids, ‘Please keep coming,’” Tory said.

Mother Jennifer Chang, 44, attended on Sunday in a group of four families from Etobicoke, with 11 children ranging from five to twelve years old.

Colleen Madden Daven, 40, was part of that group. She noted the families were a diverse group, whose birthplaces included South Korea, Lithuania, U.S., El Salvador, and India and Canada.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“We all want to give back to the community,” Chang said.

Retiree Amy Hyatt, 57, of Pickering said she volunteered at the food bank back when she was in her twenties and felt the pull to return, as she wondered how families survive with the high cost of living in the GTA.

“The need now is higher than ever,” Hyatt said.

Read more about: