ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2022 | VOL. 78 NO. 50
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Melanie Mason (left) and Jared Braun inside the Fort St. John Salvation Army food bank.
A year at the food bank Matt Preprost editor@ahnfsj.ca
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When Melanie Mason took on the job of managing the Fort St. John food bank last year, she knew she’d be helping residents struggling with poverty, addictions, and their mental health. But one of her biggest eye-openers was seeing how big the need was from local seniors. Close to 700 families are using the local food bank every month heading into Christmas, with between 35 to 65 visits a day. And around one quarter of them are seniors. “The biggest thing that I learned is people that suffer the most are actually the seniors, and they have the least amount of resources,” says Mason, who marked her oneyear anniversary overseeing food bank operations for the Salvation Army at the end of November. “They come in, they’re like, ‘You’re the only person I’m going to see this week,’ because otherwise they sit at home. Maybe their family is too far away to visit, they don’t have the means to visit, or they just don’t have family, period; you know, they never had children, or their husband maybe passed away. “Talking with people about it, it’s scary; being alone and not having the resources.” Mason started her role going into last year’s Christmas season, a shift from working as a pharmacy technician in health care for 15 years. She says her past history drew her naturally to the role. “I’ve gone through addiction, I’ve gone through
homelessness, being a lowerincome single mom,” says Mason, now married and a mom to four teenage children. “I had personal experience with being on the down and out.” “A lot of the times you meet people that their whole family has kind of washed their hands of them. They’ve tried, they just don’t want to give anymore, they don’t want to enable,” she says. “But ultimately for anyone to recover and move past it, they just need to know somebody, anybody, cares, even if it is just someone in a food bank.” The local food bank continues to serve low-income families, the single moms and dads, and the un- or underemployed workers too. In recent months, it’s started to serve a growing number of Ukrainians that have settled here after fleeing war in their home country, meeting needs for about 20 big families now. Jared Braun, executive director for the Salvation Army, says monthly demand at the food bank has nearly doubled from two years ago. “We all were feeling the pinch this last year with inflation, it continues to be there,” he says. “Imagine someone who already was in a lower income bracket. When you think of the senior who’s got a fixed income that’s just simply not going to be able to make any more, well, their dollars just are not going as far.” “We’ve seen lots of new people that never would have thought they had to use the food bank,” he adds, “but they’ve just come to the point where they’ve got to make a critical decision: Do I keep
paying rent? Do I keep paying my hydro? And how do I afford my groceries? “That’s where we fit in, to say, we don’t do any means testing, that if you need food, if you need those grocery supports, you can come, you can get that here.” With demand continuing to rise over the last year, Braun admits Mason had to jump right into her role and, as he puts it, “learn to swim really fast.” But he credits her for being a “visionary” well aligned with his own vision for the organization. “What Melanie came with was just a heart to serve the community, I think that’s what you have to have to do this work,” Braun says. “She’s brought a lot of creative thinking to what we do in trying to help it be more efficient, be more dignified in the experience.” Mason says her goal this year has been to build on the other half of her job, where it’s not just collecting donations and handing out food. That means getting to know clients personally to “get down to the nitty-gritty of what’s going on in their lives” and help connect them with other services, she says. “A lot of the times, it does go back to addiction or they’ve just had a breakdown in their career or a breakdown in a relationship,” she says about why people need the food bank. “We have so many other community services like the women’s resource centre, the pregnancy centre, so many places that can help individuals, that I think a lot of people don’t know about.” Continued on A7
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S K R O FIREW
An Atlin couple, who called Fort St. John home for close to four decades, are trying to pick up the pieces after fire destroyed their home this month Wayne and Connie Morris re-located to the remote northwest B.C. community, in what Connie’s daughter, Katherine von Hollen, describes as spiritual. “They travelled to the community a few years back and both felt they were being called there,” she said. “They decided to buy a house and made the move permanent about three years ago.” On Sunday morning, Dec. 4m the couple’s life changed overnight, or in this case, in one morning, after Connie smelled smoke. “It was just after 6 a.m. My mom was sleeping. She has a very sensitive nose. My dad sleeps with a CPAP [breathing apparatus] on his face,” said von Hollen. Once awoken by Connie, Wayne went out to look for the source of the smoke. He found it – a fully-involved fire that had already begun inside the property’s watershed, one connected to the two-storey home. “He opened the door and flames flew out. Inside the shed, they had a stool and the people who delivered the water Friday unknowingly moved that stool too close to the radiated heater that’s in there. It ignited.” While her parents are devastated, they’re not laying the blame on anyone, calling it an unfortunate circumstance. If there is a silver lining in all of this, the two, Tonjah, their Siberian Husky and two cats, Jackson and Jinx, were all able to make it out safely. In his travels Wayne, now 75, is well-known for his community work, in Dawson Creek with the Kiwanis club, in Kamloops, as a minor hockey and baseball coach, and in Fort St. John, with the Royal Canadian Legion, a serving member of the legion member for over 50 years. Connie has spent countless volunteer hours at the Salvation Army, Legion, Citizens on Patrol, Fort St. John Friendship Society, and Junior Forest Wardens program. Continued on A7
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For details, contact 250-785-4592 or visit fortstjohn.ca/nye-fireworks