Tag Archives: DBFB

Y2K

While tidying up the basement yesterday, I pulled down an unlabelled file box that turned out to have some writing on the back.

*When I left Daily Bread in 2001, I packed my personal items in this box and it ended up moving back to PEI with me.*

This is a relic of Year 2000 prepping in Canada’s largest city.

I worked at the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto from 1994 until 2001. In January 2000, DBFB was located at 530 Lakeshore Boulevard West at the foot of Bathurst Street in the original Loblaws warehouse. Built in the 1920s, it was a massive, dusty, slightly-scary building, but as we paid no rent to our landlords, Wittington Properties, the real estate arm of the Loblaws grocery chain, to us it was home sweet home.

Part of my job was looking after the DBFB archives. We didn’t have much money, so I was always on the lookout for clean, gently-used file boxes that occasionally came in filled with donations of non-perishable food that I could reuse for storage. I plucked this beauty from a pile at the side of the loading dock after its contents had been emptied into a larger box ready for the sorting procedure we used for public donations during the first week of 2000.

The turning of the clock from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000 had people a little freaked out, and many started to prepare by purchasing extra food in case computer glitches caused transportation issues and the food supply ran short.

Short term businesses popped up that would deliver a pallet of food and household necessities to your home designed to get you through the complete break down of society. I even knew people who were preparing for (and looking forward to) the “end times” and the return of Jesus Christ, but who also bought a lot of extra food and water….just in case.

Governments planned well in advance for any possible issues and Daily Bread was included in that planning. Toronto was estimated to have a three day supply of food on hand at any time in grocery stores, warehouses, the Ontario Food Terminal, and the large manufacturing factories of companies like Campbell and Kraft. After those supplies were used up, well, there would be panic.

I’m probably not giving away any important secrets now to reveal that if the Y2K bug had caused widespread disruption, Daily Bread (and probably other similar organizations) would have been taken over by the government, the building protected by the military, and the food we had on hand (which could be millions of pounds) would have been distributed to the general public.

Knowing about this planning meant I not only bought some extra food and bottled water myself, but I filled my car with gas, got a few hundred dollars out of the bank, and was prepared to hightail it out of Toronto and drive to PEI as fast as I could if things went sideways. My parents always had masses of food preserved and, well, we are resilient in rural PEI in a way a major city just isn’t; I had seen how messed up Toronto could get after a big snow storm and didn’t want to white knuckle the end of the world there.

In the end, nothing much happened when the year 2000 started, except people realised they didn’t need all the Chef Boyardee and Kraft Dinner they had in their cupboards and wanted to donate it to the food bank, which was a happy bonus for us. I believe the file box I have came from one of the large office buildings in the downtown business district, where employees decided to set up their own collection bins so they could toss in their extra non-perishables on their way to work.

All the details of the impromptu Y2K food drive we launched escaped me, but I found this Globe and Mail interview with our executive director, Sue Cox, from that time that fills in the blanks. Sue was a great boss and a lot of fun, as the last sentence shows!

Y2K bust proves a boon for food banks

John Gray

Toronto

Published January 10, 2000

The Y2K bug that didn't bite has proven to be a windfall for some of the needy in the Toronto region.

The Daily Bread Food Bank estimates that about 13,500 kilograms of food have been contributed from stockpiles that nervous residents had built up in the event of a turn-of-the-century disaster.

When the possible disaster did not happen, Daily Bread issued a public appeal that the unneeded goods be dropped off at firehalls and Loblaws supermarkets in the greater Toronto region.

Sue Cox, executive director of Daily Bread, said there had been "a nice response" throughout the region.

Although not even a partial tally of donations will be completed until tomorrow, and contributions may continue for some time, Ms. Cox said preliminary estimates suggested there have been at least 30,000 pounds (13,500 kilograms) of food contributed.

She thought most of the contributions really had come from people who feared the world's computer systems would stagger, if not collapse, from complications of entering a new century and who stocked up on food as a precaution.

She cited an encounter with one woman who arrived at a firehall with about 22 kilograms of food that she had stored in her basement as a hedge against a crippled computer infrastructure.

Pronouncing herself pleased with the results, Ms. Cox said she had never conducted a millennial food drive before and did not really expect ever to conduct another.

I actually went to work on January 1, 2000 even though the food bank was closed not because I was a workaholic (though I was, a bit), but I was in charge of the computer network and telephone system and was curious to see if everything was still chugging along.

Our computer network was 30 donated 386 and 486 computers and a few printers. Our server was a 586 Compaq desktop running a Novell product. We had two fax machines. There was only one computer connected to the internet, located in our mail/fax room, and I would log onto it to send or receive the odd email, but it wasn’t connected to our internal network at all, the best firewall ever.

DBFB had a very simple website that was hosted and updated free of charge by a company with headquarters downtown. We referred to our website in our marketing, but it got very little traffic.

dailybread.ca May 10, 2000 from Internet Archive.

I spent most Saturdays in November and December 1999 testing the computers for Y2K compatibility using a disc that had been sent to us by the federal government. I can’t remember what happened if a computer failed the test, but I probably patched the Windows operating system somehow and moved on to the next computer.

We had an amazing HP printer, a LaserJet 4. It was an astonishing workhorse. It printed hundreds of pages a week in our dusty office, rarely jamming. I cleaned a mouse nest out of it once and it just kept going. I had it repaired by a technician who came to the food bank a couple of times when it stopped working, and he would replace a part and get it going again.

Somehow I found out that there was a chance the LaserJet 4 wouldn’t work properly or connect to our intranet, so the first thing I did on that January 1 was boot my computer and send a page to print on the LaserJet 4, and of course it worked. That little beauty was still chugging away when I moved back to PEI in 2001.

Tom and Lena

I’m a couple of weeks late marking the 50th wedding anniversary of Tom Connors and Lena Welsh, and not even sure now how that milestone came into my mind. Tom was a singer/songwriter known as Stompin’ Tom. He was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and adopted by a couple who lived in Skinner’s Pond, PEI, where there is now an interpretive centre to showcase his musical talents and life. Tom died in 2013, but Lena is still alive, as far as I know.

He wrote and sang, in the classic country and western style, about working people and places he visited while criss-crossing Canada numerous times. Every Prince Edward Islander who attended elementary school in the 1970s and 80s probably sang in choir and can still remember every word to the song of his that is most connected with PEI: “Bud the Spud”.

Why do I remember when he got married? Because we watched it on television in school. I was in second grade, and we sat on the floor, gathered around what was probably a black and white television, on Friday, November 2 to watch Tom and Lena get married on the CBC Television program Elwood Glover’s Luncheon Date. I don’t remember Glover, and only have dim memories of watching the wedding, but I knew it was a Big Deal because television was still viewed as slightly unedifying in 1973, Sesame Street be damned, and wasn’t used in our primary education, with only a few exceptions.

Original Toronto Star caption: Happiest moment of my life, says Stompin’ Tom Connors as he weds Lena Welsh, 26, Magdalen Islands barmaid, on Elwood Glover’s TV show, Luncheon Date, today. Here, Glover, left, congratulates bride and groom after an estimated 2 million viewers tuned in on the formal, 12-minute ceremony. The 36-year-old folk singer is from Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I. Wedding was a first for TV in Canada. (From Toronto Public Library Digital Archive. Copyright Toronto Star, photographer Frank Lennon.)

When you are seven years old, experiencing things for the first time is commonplace, so I had no idea that famous people didn’t get married on television all the time. The only other non-royal person who had their wedding televised, that I can think of, was Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki, but I was only three when that occurred, we wouldn’t have received the US station it was broadcast on, and Tiny Tim terrified me, so I would have avoided it: if you want me to give up state secrets, just play him singing “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” and I’ll tell you everything.

Stompin’ Tom possibly wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Islanders LOVED him to bits. When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited PEI in the summer of 1973 to mark the 100th anniversary of our province joining Canada, a concert was held in Charlottetown to mark the auspicious occasion. Family friends were visiting us from Toronto, and one of our guests was a woman who had recently moved to Canada and had grown up in a unionist household in Northern Ireland. She loved the Queen, and was thrilled we would be able to watch the concert live on television.

I don’t remember watching this show, but the family lore is that the broadcast began with the usual pomp that accompanies the arrival of a royal. The audience, in all their Charlottetown finery, politely applauded to welcome the royal couple. There were speeches, and I would bet Anne of Green Gables made an appearance. Our Irish friend watched with great interest.

And then Stompin’ Tom took to the stage with his guitar, undoubtably in his trademark black outfit and cowboy hat. Don’t know what he sang, but it would have been something twangy and foot stompin’. The crowd, who had given the royal couple a suitably dignified and muted welcome, erupted into hoots and hollers and thunderous applause for this tall skinny fellow who looked like a bad guy from a Hollywood western. Our friend couldn’t understand how he could get a bigger reaction from the audience than the queen did, and my mother said she watched the rest of the broadcast with a slightly bristly reserve.

I met Tom once backstage at the famed Toronto music venue, Massey Hall. The Stompin’ part of his stage name came from his habit of stomping his left foot so hard he would make a hole in the stage, to the displeasure of venue owners, so he started using a small piece of plywood to stomp upon, holding it up at the end of the performance to let the particles he dislodged with his heel drift to the stage.

At some point he started auctioning off the boards for charity. In September 1999, he decided the Daily Bread Food Bank would get the money from the board auction at his Massey Hall concert and although I wasn’t the PR person for our organization, I was the token PE Islander on the staff (an exotic creature!) and given the opportunity to attend the show and accept the donation.

It was fantastic to finally see Tom live and even more wonderful to be in an audience of true fans, many of whom were also originally from Atlantic Canada. We sang along, and cried with him as he became overcome with emotion while singing “Confederation Bridge” and couldn’t continue the song: “And it’s calling, calling me over, the blue water’s rolling and soon I’ll be strolling out there. Down by the ocean, where the Island devotion to friendship is found everywhere.”

Illegal and very poor quality flash photography by me (a former theatre usher and stage manager who knew better), Massey Hall, Toronto, September 18, 1999. I swear that’s Tom.

The board auction was held during the show, and the winner was able to meet Tom after the show to get his board signed, and I was present to arrange to get the money, a very generous $5,000. I first met Lena, who was lovely when I told her I was from PEI (she’d likely met everyone from PEI by that point), an elegant, quiet lady. Then Tom came into the green room, bigger than life, holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in another, greeting each person one by one.

When it was my turn to speak to Tom, I thanked him for supporting DBFB and then told him my father often spoke of the night sometime in the 1960s at our local community festival when the organizers heard that Tom was in the audience. My father, acting as emcee for the evening, asked Tom up on stage to sing a few songs, which he agreed to do. The roof nearly came off the rink with the audience response, and as he headed out into the night, they gave him a big feed of cooked lobsters. He slapped me on the back and said he remembered that night, though I wonder if he really did.

Hugh Gillis, the man who bought the board that night at Massey Hall, drove to PEI four years ago to donate it and two others he bought over the years to the Stompin’ Tom Centre. He apparently has no connection to PEI, even though he has a classic Island name, but just seems to be a wonderfully generous man.

The other reason I remember September 18, 1999 was that when I got home from the concert, there was a message on my telephone answering machine from a fellow I had met at a birthday party the week before, asking if I wanted to go out on a date some time. I did, and we did, and now we are married, like Lena and Tom.

Stompin’ Tom celebrates the $5,000 his Stompin’ Board Auction bought for Daily Bread Food Bank from bidder Hugh Gillis. Here Hugh (on left) and a friend enjoy a laugh with Tom. Taken backstage at the Stompin’ Tom Connors “Meet and Greet” after his show at Massey Hall in Toronto on September 18, 1999. (Photographer: Barry Roden – Credit: Library and Archives Canada)

April 30

20 years ago tonight I was spending my last evening at 257 Pacific Avenue in the High Park area of Toronto. I had quit my job of seven years at the Daily Bread Food Bank and was heading to PEI with my partner (now husband), Steven. We had been together for 18 months. Soon into our relationship we talked about moving out of Toronto, probably somewhere in rural Ontario, but we changed course after a trip to PEI in August, 2000.

Being the only child of older parents (both turned 79 in 2001, my father on that April 30th), I felt a great pull to return to PEI and help them. My father was in the beginning stages of what turned into dementia, and my mother was taking on more and more responsibility, but finding it a challenge, though she was and is remarkable for her age. I was 34 and had been away from PEI for 17 years, but it was time to go home. Steven was game, so that was that.

We gave away tons of stuff before we moved, much of it to a centre in the east end of Toronto who helped people transition from homeless shelters to apartments. Friends took bits and pieces, then the movers came on April 29 and gathered up what was left. I arranged with the woman who was taking over the apartment for her to move her stuff in on April 30, as long as we could sleep there (on the floor, we were so youngish!) that night in the bedroom with our two cats, Emma and Digby.

I left the apartment in the afternoon while the new gal moved her stuff in, and went to say goodbye to friends. When I returned, the cats were freaked out by being locked in the bedroom, so we had a tense, meowy evening. I tried to get some sleep as I was going to drive us straight through to PEI (Steven has never driven). Steven was out with some pals for a goodbye dinner and he got back rather late.

After a little bit of uncomfortable dozing, we got up on May 1 at 4 a.m., shoved the cats into a carrier in the back of my red VW Golf, pointed the car east, and drove away. If you haven’t driven 1,700 km in one day with 2 yowling cats, you are missing the trip of a lifetime. By the time we reached Quebec City in the afternoon, the cats had collapsed into eternal despair and mercifully slept for a bit.

We arrived in Foxley River around 12:30 a.m. May 2, and collapsed at our family cottage where we would live that summer. My mother had left supper in the fridge, but for possibly the first and last time in my life, I was too tired to eat. Our neighbour called us at 8 a.m. the next morning to ask if we had seen their dog, and so it began on PEI, just as if I had never left.

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Tag Archives: DBFB

Y2K

Tom and Lena

April 30