It's Thanksgiving Monday. The sun is shining warm and bright. People are out taking walks or riding their bikes, soaking it all in.
Inside The Gathering Place, North Bay's only soup kitchen, diners have arrived for a traditional Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, a vegetable and pie for dessert. By the end of the lunch hour, roughly 100 diners will have be served.
Marianne is thankful that she could celebrate the day with people she has shared other meals with along the way.
"It just feels like we're at home with people, its like family and close friends that get together. The staff are wonderful people," says Marianne. "I don't have any family in North Bay. If I couldn't come here, I'd just be at home. It's kind of lonely on my own, so it's nice that we have this here because it gives other people a chance to meet new people."
This is Betty Peever's second year serving up Thanksgiving meals, thinking of the daughter with every plate she fills.
"I lost my daughter to addiction two years ago yesterday. My son and I decided to do this in memory of my daughter, and to share with other people our journey."
Shayne Beaucage is an assistant cook and kitchen supervisor at The Gathering Place. Beaucage says he has plenty to be thankful for at this time of year.
"When you don't have a lot of money for food, a meal can be the best present you can ever get," says Beaucage. "It means a lot to me because I've grown up in a food insecure environment, where we went a lot of days without eating. Now that I have a decent job, it feels good to give something back to the community because I know how it feels to go without food."
Outside the community dining room, Jackson Charette hands out wrapped pumpkin tarts made at his church. The soon-to-be 10-year-old has made this part of his Thanksgiving tradition for the past four years.
"It feels good because I'm helping someone who needs it, and they say thank you," says Charette."I think it's important because if someone needs help, then we should help them."
Charette's dad Chris Vega is a social service worker who believes it's never too early to teach children the importance of helping others.
"There's a lot of people in our community who aren't as fortunate as us, so I want him to know there are people who need help and it only takes a few moments of our time to help them. He learns to think of others and if he seem someone who needs help, we help. That's what I want him to learn."
Executive director, Dennis Chippa says he's thankful to all the volunteers who came out on Thanksgiving Monday to show the diners they care about them. He says for a lot of the volunteers, no matter the day, they are their extended family.
Chippa says the busy Thanksgiving meal is the continuation of an extremely busy summer.
"The numbers have been incredibly high. We didn't ever have a break. We track the numbers weekly, so the first week of the month is good, then it gradually gets busier, but we were busy from start to finish all summer long. From June right through even to September was incredibly busy," says Chippa.
"At the beginning of the month It used to be that 120 to 130 people at a lunch sitting was busy, now it's the new norm. This summer, at the end of each month, we were at 140 to 150 diners at lunch, even 160 wasn't out of the realm. Normally we get about 75 to 80 for dinner, we were getting 110. At breakfast we were getting 75 to 80 people. We never get those kind of numbers. When you think back 15 years ago when we started the kitchen, 60 was an incredibly busy noon hour."
Chippa says it puts a strain on the budget. Food rescue programs provided by some of the local grocery stores and the Farmer's Market help off-set the rising food costs, along with food harvested from the community garden. On this day, most of the ingredients have been donated
The Gathering Place has outgrown it's existing building. It now has a building permit for its new location on Cassells Street. The kitchen will be twice its current size, with close to double the seating capacity at 40 seats, with much needed extra storage space. Most of the equipment has already been purchased, to handle the busy days.
The targeted move in date is sometime next June
The existing building will be sold, which Chippa says will help with the mortgage.
Until then, The Gathering Place will continue to serve up hot meals to anyone in need of a bite to eat, in a welcoming environment.
