Glen Pearson and his co-director Jane Roy are the longest-serving food bank directors in the country but in their 37 years, Pearson says he’s never seen anything like it.
Ontario’s London Food Bank suffered two break-ins in less than a week that resulted in stolen items, damaged equipment and a delay to the harvest of its unique fresh produce program — but it’s the community response that has him floored.
“I think at first we couldn’t believe somebody would do that to us because everybody knows what the food bank does in town,” Pearson said.
“But then all of a sudden, we’re fielding all these calls … I think it’s given us a kind of new lease on life or a real feeling that the food bank still really matters because Londoners really care for others.”
What happened
The first break-in at 926 Leathorne St., northeast of Adelaide Street South and Commissioners Road West, occurred overnight between Thursday, June 30 and Friday, July 1. Pearson said someone cut holes in the chain-link fence at the back, destroyed “a number” of the raised beds for vegetables and attempted to steal food but a neighbour saw them and tried to film them, prompting them to flee.
Pearson says they filed a report with police online and it was too dark for the neighbour to capture much on film. London police have confirmed that the incident was reported and that an investigation is ongoing.
The second incident was at 1 a.m. Sunday, July 2, and “was a fair bit more ambitious,” Pearson said.
“They had cut the door of the greenhouse. They took a bunch of plants again, but they took all the wheels off the wheelbarrows and took them, for whatever reason. They broke into our shed, which is a fairly fortified one, and took all of our power tools. And then they also went into the greenhouse and created some damage there.”
Some of those power tools were Pearson’s own and had been handed down to him by his father.
“What the police said was usually people will come and rob a place twice or three times if they are not caught and they see an opening.”
It will take roughly a month to repair the damage to the greenhouse and shed but the worst thing for the volunteers is the loss of time resulting from the damage to the raised vegetable beds.
“They lost probably two weeks to a month of the growing season,” he said. “It’s probably pushed that harvest back from the beginning of August to the beginning of September.”
How the community is responding
Pearson admitted it’s an unusual reaction, but he said he feels like the break-ins have turned out to be a good thing.
“It’s actually helped to draw Londoners’ attention to a lot of this miraculous growing that’s going on at the back of the food bank, which has nothing to do with me or with Jane, the other co-director. These are just volunteers working with Luis (Reyes, the food bank’s agronomist) to do their thing.”
Pearson said the response on social media was instantaneous and that “almost all (messages) were about, ‘can we come down and help? Do you need donations? What do you need?'”
Groups like The PATCH, which has its own greenhouse in the Cavendish area of London, have asked what they can provide and Heeman’s offered support after the first break-in, said Pearson.
Pearson said the food bank is now conducting an assessment to be sure they are aware of everything that’s been taken but some large stores have offered to donate the tools they’ve lost.
“Somebody is meeting us at the food bank tomorrow who has a number of security cameras that they wish to give us,” he said, and a police officer will meet with them next week to provide guidance on how to make the premises more secure.
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