The Jasper Food Bank continues to help feed residents from its temporary location at the Jasper Royal Canadian Legion after its old space was destroyed in the wildfire.
Blaine Wylde, who recently became operations manager for the Jasper Food Bank, said they were grateful to the legion and busy looking to find a more permanent location.
“Right now, we’re lacking fridge and freezer space, which really limits what we can take for donations and what we can provide for the clients,” Wylde said.
Since many buildings have been destroyed, the food bank will potentially get a trailer set up and is working with the municipality to determine a location and timeframe.
Wylde said while the demand overall for the food bank hasn’t changed much post-wildfire, they have gotten many new clients. She speculated that this may be due to many residents having yet to return, and those who have may not have jobs or their hours are significantly cut.
“We’ve had lots of new names that weren’t on my list last week and the week before that too,” she said.
The food bank currently has small stations where clients can take one or more of certain items and is allowing clients to choose for themselves.
“Everyone takes bread and there’s lots of noodles and pasta sauce and soups and canned vegetables and stuff like that,” Wylde said. “One thing we’re looking to expand on is just [to] try and get more of the fresh fruits and vegetables in as much as we can, trying to get them right before we open so that we’re not storing them.”
The food bank still has plenty of water from back when residents were returning and much of the community was still under a boil water advisory. Wylde encouraged anyone to drop by to pick up water so the food bank can have more room. They also have extra dog food to give away.
The food bank doesn’t have much space for in-kind donations and is more in need of financial donations to ensure its sustainability in the long term.
It may be willing to accept items such as individual bags of rice and beans, oil, granola bars and nut-free snacks, diapers and female sanitary products, but Wylde asked donors to hold on to their goods for now until the food bank moved into a new space.
The food bank previously announced it would no longer operate in July and August, similar to Banff’s food bank, partially due to more work being available during the summer months. Wylde said the board would likely reevaluate this measure in light of the wildfire.
“It’s such a time of transition right now that we really don’t know what to expect in the next couple months,” she added. “Even with Christmas and Thanksgiving and all that stuff coming up, it’s really hard to predict what the need's going to be.”
The food bank is accessible through the side door of the Jasper Royal Canadian Legion and is open Thursdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
“We’re happy to have this space at the Legion,” Wylde said. “We feel very lucky that we were able to get in so quickly and that we can operate, and so the next steps would be securing our own location and getting set up and starting our work from there.”
