Hungry in Kawartha Lakes }} Forty years after the first Canadian food
bank opened its doors, Kawartha Lakes Food Source leader says the root causes of food bank use are still with us
JESSICA TOPFER Writer-at-large
Neil Couch first visited a food bank in 2011. A particularly challenging divorce that year had left him homeless, living at A Place Called Home. He’d had a colourful life. After returning from active duty in the Canadian Armed Forces between 1986 and 1994, Couch found himself struggling with PTSD and turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with his anxiety and night terrors. As a master corporal, he was based out of West Germany, and had done tours in Somalia, Cyprus and Afghanistan. In 2013, Couch was diagnosed with stage four bone cancer. While fighting his own battle against cancer, he lost his wife to aggressive ovarian cancer. This left him as a single father. Between his PTSD and cancer, Couch has been unable to hold down a steady job. He picked up a variety of manual labour positions over the years but was unable to maintain them as his mental and physical health deteriorated. Couch, now 53, is a recipient of Ontario Works. Each month, after all his bills are paid, he is left with approximately $80 in his account to take care of himself and the two teenaged children who still live at home with him. Stagnant social assistance rates and rapidly rising costs of living make it impossible to cover his family’s essential costs of living. His need for food bank support “comes and goes,” he says. “It depends on if there is an unexpected expense or higher bill than usual. If I don’t need the help one month then I won’t use them. There’s always someone out there worse off than me.” CONT’D ON PAGE 14
NEIL COUCH Photo: Sienna Frost.
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