‘We can’t get past that number’: St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank hits unwanted record for 2025

St. Thomas Food bank reporting record usage in 2025 with half of clients being new users. Bryan Bicknell reports.

The St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank hit a milestone in 2025. But it’s not one that anyone’s proud of.

The agency fed a record number of people last year.

Among them, client Destiny Johnston, who could be found taking advantage of Community Share donations Tuesday.

She said with food prices so high, she doesn’t know how she’d manage without the extra help.

“It’s insane,” she exclaimed. “Especially with having dietary restrictions, the prices are astronomical compared to, say, like even three years ago.”

The food bank says in 2025, it recorded 26,278 mouths fed. It’s a new record, up from 24,949 in 2024.

It’s also nearly tripled from just six years earlier, when in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number was 8,900 mouths fed.

Meanwhile, the agency served 1,811 households in 2025, with 927, or nearly half, being first time food bank users.

“We can’t get past that number,” said Sarah Coleman, manager of operations. “We’re feeding a lot more people. We were worried we were going to hit 30,000. We didn’t, thankfully. But who knows what this year will bring.”

Karen McDade, manager of Public Relations and Administration, explained that the numbers are high, in part, because many of the agency’s clients are multi-generational households.

“Because of the prices of groceries, as well as housing, and be it the mortgage rates and rent, a lot of them are his-and-her families combined together. A lot of times it’s the grandparents that are also living there to save money. So, some of our households are 10 people,” said McDade.

It’s not all grim news. The food bank has a bounty of food supplies at the moment, with the top floor of the John Street building filled with donations. However, most of it is from generous holiday drives held late last year throughout the county. What’s on hand is only expected to last for about three months, cautioned Sarah Coleman.

“We will need to buy again very soon,” she said.

The other positive news for the food bank is that it has just received accreditation from Food Banks Canada. That means it now qualifies for much needed assistance from the national agency, and from Feed Ontario.

As for Destiny Johnston, she’s glad the help is there when the cupboards are bare.

“It’s an extreme help,” said Johnston.

“I usually come and look if there’s anything we can make use of,” she said as she walked off into the cold afternoon, a small cart of food in tow.