The Prince Albert Food Bank is seeing more demand with Thanksgiving now just days away. (File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Rob Mahon

Busy Food Bank

Increase in demand for food bank ahead of Thanksgiving

Oct 4, 2021 | 3:00 PM

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, many people are looking forward to large meals with their family and picturing a table packed with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and all manner of other Thanksgiving staples.

For others, however, it is another day on which they need help putting any food on the table at all.

Leading into the Thanksgiving weekend, the Prince Albert Food Bank is seeing a rise in demand for their services. They don’t have any special meals planned themselves, but on long weekends and before holidays, a renewed need for food is apparently normal.

“At this point, we’re just keeping up with demand,” said Kim Scruby, executive director. “It often does [increase]. It depends on the time of the month. Christmas, actually, we see a pretty big increase. With COVID and all that, everything has been a little different this year.”

This will be the second year in a row the food bank and those who need their help have had to deal with restrictions around COVID-19 at Thanksgiving. According to Scruby, their numbers began to rise in the summer when restrictions lifted, but he doesn’t yet know what the need for food will be like as the weekend draws nearer.

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“We’ve still had folks dropping off food throughout the whole COVID process,” he said. “Some businesses have still done food drives and that type of thing for us.”

Though Thanksgiving-related items may be welcome donations, the big need right now for the food bank is pasta. Other canned or non-perishable goods are always in demand.

“I think we still have some folks who are unable to return to work or work has been slow,” Scruby said. “We’re seeing a bit more of a demand in that regard… Unfortunately, with the new COVID restrictions, we won’t be able to have any major food drives.”

Though there are several new public health orders that are in effect as of Friday, Scrubby said the ones surrounding vaccination won’t make a difference for their operations. They’ve had COVID precautions in place for some time.

“We’ve had the mask mandate on throughout and we’ve had no problem with clients complying with it,” Scruby said. “We’re still providing hand sanitizer and sanitizing everything else.”

Scruby also said the way the community was supporting them throughout COVID had been fantastic to see and that had helped them keep up with increases in demand.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP