A Quebec developer is coming to the aid of La Bouchée Généreux, a food bank overwhelmed by demand for three years, to offer it a new temporary space better adapted to its growing needs.
Thirty years ago, when La Bouchée Généreux distributed 100 food baskets per week, “that was a lot,” explains its director, Pierre Gravel. Today, the weekly average has increased 11-fold: around 1,100 packages are now being taken. The beneficiaries are crammed into occupied premises that, since 2011 and before the pandemic, had welcomed half as many people.
“Humanly, it was impossible to accept that people have to wait outside in the winter to feed their families,” laments its general manager, Pierre Gravel. Starting in October, the food counter will move a few hundred meters away, to the former garage of a Sears, in the heart of a shopping center parking lot undergoing a major transformation costing $1.5 billion.
The new, more spacious premises will allow La Bouchée Généreux to distribute approximately 200 food baskets per hour – a 20% increase over its current capacity – and, above all, to eliminate the queues outside, which the food bank has been denouncing for years.
“It was a heavy burden that we had,” says Marie-Pier Gravel, the assistant director of the food bank. “There are about 5,700 different people who benefit from our services in a single month. We know them, these families, we know these people – and we care about them.”
The Gravels, father and daughter, had been expressing their dismay for years in the face of premises that had become too cramped to adequately meet the needs of the most destitute. It was a heartfelt cry from La Bouchée broadcast on Quebec City radio last winter that moved William Trudel and made him decide to help the organization.
His company, Trudel, has agreed to rent the old garage below market price for three years to the food bank. In addition, it will carry out the work necessary to develop it at cost. A gift that amounts to a little over $1.3 million in income waivers.
At the end of a vast fundraising campaign, Trudel will also build, again at cost price, the head office of La Bouchée Généreux, which will house him at the end of his three-year lease. A project, the businessman estimates, costing $10 million.
“The community domain must work with the private domain and the private domain must work with the community domain,” he emphasizes. “The solution we are putting forward today is the future.”
Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand is delighted with the happy outcome for people in need who frequent La Bouchée Généreux – but admits in the same breath that this is only the “tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s not just 1,100 families in need in Quebec City, it’s thousands of families in Quebec City who need food assistance services. It’s a job we can’t do alone, as a city. It’s a responsibility,” he concludes, “of the Quebec government.”