The kitchen at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute is a flurry of activity on a spring Monday morning, as the high school students prepare lunch for their peers.
Teenage boys peel and chop fresh kiwis and toss them into a bowl. Other students put dozens of paper liners in several muffin pans so that generous scoops of chocolate chip muffin batter can be dropped in.
Grade 12 student Shan Ali peels and quickly chops a glove of garlic. He says food brings people together.
“Food is something that bonds everyone, it doesn’t matter where you’re from,” he said. “Even just the act of preparing a dish, to serve it to someone, seeing the looks on their faces, it’s a good feeling.”
The students at Marc Garneau C.I., the only high school in the populous Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood, are learning in more than just a traditional classroom — volunteers are learning how to cook sustainable meals to feed hundreds of their fellow classmates.
The school has a free breakfast and lunch program to ensure that all students have access to meals throughout the school day. Hunger and being unable to afford food is a growing issue in Toronto and nationally, as food bank usage has skyrocketed amid inflation and concerns about the profits of grocery store giants.
In Thorncliffe Park, residents and advocates say food insecurity is a problem.
The Neighbourhood Organization’s local food bank fed 2,322 new households in 2022, up from 1,089 in 2021. That’s according to an analysis published last year by Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Food Justice, a research group funded by the federal government and multiple neighbourhood organizations.
Students at Thorncliffe Park’s Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute are learning in more than just a traditional classroom. Volunteers are in the kitchen, learning how to cook sustainable meals. It’s all part of a breakfast and lunch program, which services hundreds of students in the school while also meeting the needs of a diverse student population.
School publishing cookbook of student recipes
The program isn’t just to help feed students.
It’s also part of education around the hospitality industry and to help students learn more if they want to pursue a career, said Sharon Gunn, the Marc Garneau hospitality and tourism teacher, who runs the kitchen program.
Even if students do not pursue a career in food, she says she wants them to have an appreciation for cooking and sustainability.
“I think that comes into showing students how not to waste anything,” Gunn said.
“We have students today making ricotta cheese with milk that might have been on the cusp of the date going past for a best before date. We turn that into ricotta cheese.”
The school is also publishing a cookbook next month that will contain a collection of recipes that represent the school’s “diverse community,” according to an update on the school’s website. It says students are working with leaders in their community and in the hospitality industry to test the recipes and produce all the content.