There is a community meal somewhere on Cortes Island every week.
“A warm bowl of soup, or a stew, that’s at the heart of it. Then there’s always some sort of fresh veggies or a fresh veggie platter cut up. Folks are getting that kind of food in them. Then bread and butter, because that’s just the basics for everybody and usually a dessert, some sort of cookies or brownies and the whole meal includes gluten free and vegetarian options,” explained Yasmina Cartland.
“There’s nothing you have to do to come to lunch. Everyone can come. You don’t have to prove that you need it. It’s completely inclusive. It’s meant to be a warm social time and it’s meant to actually nourish people with some warm nourishing food.”
Cortes Currents: How many people show up on a typical day?
Yasmina Cartland: “The average is around 60. That can be folks with families and little kids. The students have been coming from the Cortes Island Academy, so we’ve had that youth energy there. Also seniors and then just different individuals from all sorts of walks of life and ages. It really is quite a melange of folks who come out.”
“At one point around this time last year, maybe a little further into the spring, it was sunny and people said, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to this community lunch.’ Folks just came out of the woodwork. I hadn’t been quite ready and we didn’t have quite a big enough pot. There were about 80 people. Luckily somehow, loaves and fishes, we were able to feed everybody who came right down to the very last scraping of the pot. Which is great, but I said, ‘okay, we need a bigger pot and I need to be ready every time.’ Not that there’s been 85 people every time, but we need to be ready every time.”
“There’s people in their neighborhoods that might need a meal for whatever reason. People who don’t get out much, or don’t like to be in social settings or who’ve just been home from hospital or people are just ask, ‘Is there enough to take home?’ There are takeouts that go out into various neighbourhoods, with the neighbours thinking of their neighbours that way.”
Cortes Currents: Are you at every community meal?
Yasmina Cartland: “I haven’t always made it to Gorge Hall in a busy life, but I make sure I’m at the ones at Mansons Hall, here in the south end and over at Klahoose. I go to the ones here because I’m leading them in the cooking every second Thursday. February 6th is the next one. I’m always there along with my son Joseph, who’s eight (and homeschooling). He’s my main support and volunteer. People love to interact with Joseph.”
“At the Gorge Hall the lead cook is Georgina Silby, with Noba Anderson helping. That’s on every second Wednesday, this week on the 29th.”
(On the Tideline’s community calendar it says there will be a Mexican bean rice casserole, winter orange slaw, cake, coffee & tea.)
“Then every sixth week we go to the Klahoose Multi-Purpose Centre. Georgina mostly heads that one.”
“All of these halls have been offering their space and the kitchens for free. They’ve been waiving their fees to make sure that this can happen in a good way and keep our costs down. So not only are people getting together to socialize and eat together, there’s the partnerships in the community supporting this.”
“Keep your eye on the Tideline and then sometimes it’s also on Facebook. We try to get it out the week before so folks know where it’s going to be and what’s happening. I have good old fashioned signs that go up on the Manson’s marquee, that let people know, and I try to put them up a couple days before the Thursday, so everybody remembers that it’s this Thursday.”
“We started in December of 2023, so we’ve had just over a year of a continual run.”
“There’s a lot of layers that it touches, because it’s a community program. Some of the seeds of this came through the Better at Homes program. There’s a real force in Ester to really make sure our seniors and folks who are aging here on this island can stay here as long as they can. It started off with seniors, but we wanted to open it up to everyone. It’s a real healthful thing to come together and eat together.”
“There’s long studies in the whole psychology of people and socialization that shows sharing a meal together really bonds people. So that’s a piece of it. It’s really community driven. It’s seniors driven to have seniors stay on the island, stay social, stay active and connected.That feels important, especially right now in our current economic way things are going and everything’s costing more and more.”
Cortes Currents: How is it financed?
Yasmina Cartland: “Through grants. As grants go, there’s multiple layers that have been in granting, but we’re leaning into grants and also donations that happen right at the lunches with just a classic old school donation jar sitting there. The funding right now is primarily coming through the CCHA family support program. They got a grant for something called the Gender Equality Fund. A couple of us did a lunch that was called the Young Families Lunch for young families and new families to meet socialize and get fed.”
“When this possibility came up to feed everybody, we were able to use that grant money towards this bigger lunch that includes everybody. So primarily it’s coming through the CCHA Family Support Program funding. There’s also funding that comes through the Better at Home Food Security Initiative.”
“The seeds of this really came through Better at Home, through Ester and her vision. Then I came along and said, ‘Oh, I’m interested, could a program like this happen?’ She said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve been waiting for somebody who wants to make a program like this happen.’ It just worked. We’re always looking for grants, we’re always reapplying and I’m trying to make it work. The grant funding comes primarily through the CCHA family support program, the Better At Home Food Security Initiative, New Horizons For Seniors and the Support Our Senior Society, which is really the umbrella organization on top, and then folks like the Cortes Island Community Foundation also hold our grant and help it to get out to us in the way that it needs to, so multiple streams.”
“There’s something around a program that’s non commercialized, that isn’t transactional for money, that’s a place in lots of communities that needs to grow. We’re showing that’s possible. Its also important to let folks know how much we rely on our wonderful volunteers.”
Links of Interest:
- Better at Home on Cortes Island – Tideline (2024)
- Better at Home website
- Articles about, or mentioning, Better at Home
- The Cortes Community Health Association (CCHA) website
- Articles about, or mentioning, the CCHA
All photos courtesy Ester Strijbos and the the Better At Home Food Security Initiative.’ Top photo (L to r) Noba Anderson, Georgina Silby and Yasmina Cartland in the kitchen during a community lunch. That’s Joseph in the foreground.
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