The Good Neighbours Food Bank

"This is terrible.  There are tons of people like me who rely on food banks these days.  If these people were in need, all they needed to do is call and sign up, just like everyone else."

 It's a good and fitting name for a food bank in a small community:  The Good Neighbours Food Bank, in Embrun, Russell County, just outside Ottawa.  Because of the generosity of the community in its mindfulness of the people who live among them as their neighbours, the shelves of this community food bank are usually stocked right up to enable them to offer groceries to those in need.

And it was amply stocked, the shelves, the coolers and the freezers, when someone decided to drive a vehicle toward and into one of its entrance doors.  Gaining access when you have brute strength like a heavy mechanical battering-ram is no problem.  These thugs who emptied the food bank of its available food weren't being polite about their wish to access the food.

Amazingly enough, just a stone's throw from the building that contains the food bank is a local detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police.  Nothing seemed to alert anyone there to the inconvenience of a break-in.  Which was thought to have occurred sometime between 10:00 p.m. Monday and 8:45 a.m. the following morning.

That's when food bank president Lisette Thibault discovered the theft, amounting to about $2,000 in the value of the absconded food, and another $2,000 in damage to the building.  "These people weren't just stealing from the food bank.  They were stealing from the community."  Precisely, but a somewhat redundant statement under the circumstances; a fact of which the thieves were well aware.

And these were thieves with a very particular agenda; they certainly seemed to know what they wanted and left what didn't appeal to them.  A shelf of peanut butter got a thumbs-up, and 60 packages of processed cheese, the bank's stock of tuna and salmon tins, along with packages of bacon and hot dogs, an entire freezer-full.

The thieves, whoever they were, also took the food bank's step ladder, vacuum cleaner, a number of extension cords and a drawer-full of pencils.  The interior of the food bank was left in shambles.  Baby food and cereal boxes had been opened and deliberately trashed, spilled over the floor.  Packages of ground meat were hauled out of a freezer and just left to spoil.

Leaving a very sour taste in the minds of a good community.