Food banks deliver Thanksgiving hampers to tornado victims

Victims of the tornadoes that ripped through the Ottawa-Gatineau area last month will enjoy Thanksgiving meals this weekend, thanks to the efforts of food banks and their supporters across the region.

The West Carleton Food Access Centre and the Moisson Outaouais food bank were two of the local agencies that provided tornado victims with baskets filled with turkeys, vegetables and a handful of other much-needed items Saturday.

"I am so grateful for the community and the people I have been working with this past week and a half," said Vera Jones of the Savvy Seconds West Carleton clothing charity, which partnered with the food access centre on the project.

"It's brought so many people together." 

Preston Zaborowski, a local farmer with the Pazab Family Farm, donated hundreds of vegetables to the centre. 

"We were inspired to get involved just by the damage and destruction we saw with the recent tornadoes," Zaborowski said.

"The community has been so supportive of our family farm for the past five years that we just wanted to give back in anyway that we could."

Thanksgiving help in the Outaouais 

Moisson Outaouais, meanwhile, distributed Thanksgiving baskets on Saturday to hundreds of Gatineau households who are still recovering following the Sept. 21 tornadoes.

The extreme weather event left people without power for days, forcing many to throw away most of the food in their refrigerators.

"We ran out of [power] for six days [and] I had just gone grocery shopping … I threw it all away," Nicole Morin, a resident in the hard-hit Mont-Bleu neighbourhood, told Radio-Canada in a French-language interview. 

The Gatineau food bank handed out roughly 1,000 baskets filled with meat, fruit, eggs and hygiene products.

The organizations are now asking people to donate elsewhere as they have reached capacity.