About six months ago, a young single father came to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. He was working full time, but his rent had gone up 20 per cent and he just couldn't make ends meet. Unable to adequately feed his children, and with no other choice, he came to us. He was distraught. Like many people, he felt the stinging stigma of accepting charity, of asking for something as basic as food.
This is not an isolated or extreme case. It's entirely typical, in fact, of the 17,000 people we currently serve each month at the GVFB. Last year, we gave out eight million pounds of food. And we're not the only organization with such staggering numbers. We're seeing similar situations at food banks all across Canada, as well as in New York, in Houston, in Mexico, in the U.K. In March of last year, there were nearly 1.5 million visits to food banks across Canada, the highest March usage on record. It was 15 per cent higher than the previous year, when we were in the teeth of the pandemic. Our colleagues at the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto say demand for their services is absolutely frightening-more than 270,000 visits in March, compared to 65,000 per month before the pandemic. According to a recent report from Food Banks Canada, food bank usage is up 35 per cent from 2019, and one in seven clients is employed. Our base of lower-income donors has eroded, and some of them have even become food bank users.
この記事は Maclean's の August 2023 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は Maclean's の August 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
So You've Been Hacked - A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back
A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back.On a July morning in 2022, Brad Hynes, the IT manager for the town of St. Mary's in southwestern Ontario, was backing up the town's computer systems when things went haywire. File names became unintelligible strings of characters. Desktop icons went blank. File after file was impossible to open, a string of digital duds. The background wallpaper on Hynes's screen disappeared, replaced by the red-and-black logo of a Russian ransomware gang called LockBit. A line of all-caps text appeared: All your important files are stolen and encrypted!
Bill of Health - I spent years with excruciating hip pain, languishing in Canada's health-care queue. I finally paid for private surgery-in Lithuania.
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Green Scene - Montreal's Théâtre de Verdure stages plays and musical performances against a naturally beautiful backdrop
Théâtre de Verdure is a setting straight out of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: a thespian's paradise in the middle of a lush woodland. Since 1956, the open-air stage has occupied an island in the middle of Montreal's Parc La Fontaine, exposing park-goers to regular, accessible (read: free) and dazzling productions.
Log Off To Find Love - Apps have gamified meeting and mating-and affected our social skills for the worse. The real future of dating is offline.
In 2017, after being single for a few years, I wanted to get back into the dating game. I was newly sober at the time, so I wasn’t super-confident about venturing into my local bar scene in London, Ontario. Instead, I leapt into the world of digital dating via Bumble, which, back then, required women to send the first message. I thought, That’s feminist. I’m a feminist. Let’s try it! My first few months online provided me with an emotionally exhausting education.
"I escaped Gaza and sent my family to Egypt. Now, my goal is to reunite with them in Canada."
Bombs destroyed my neighbourhood and killed my loved ones. I hope my family and I can find refuge in Quebec.
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Several provincial governments now mandate parental consent for kids to change pronouns in Schools. Who gets to decide a child's gender?
THE JACKPOT GENERATION
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