deachman: new food bank boss spent 15 years preparing for role
4 minute read
natalie spooner has been appointed ceo of the ottawa food bank.
bruce deachman
/
postmedia
as the devastating derecho ripped through ottawa in may 2022, natalie spooner wasn’t watching the storm. she was watching hydro ottawa’s outage map.
spooner wasn’t concerned about the lights in her own home. as the ottawa food bank’s director of programs and planning at the time, she was worried about refrigerators in apartments where there was barely enough food to begin with. she was thinking about community food cupboards whose freezers were starting to thaw.
“it’s always my nervous thing,” she says. “i’ll always watch the hydro map to see what the impact is going to be.”
on that day, she checked which of the food bank’s more than 60 member agencies still had power and which didn’t. those with electricity stored food for those without. those with refrigerated trucks ignored their usual catchment-area boundaries and hauled food wherever it was needed most.
the crisis wasn’t about one organization. it wasn’t even about the food bank. by then, spooner had been with the organization for more than a decade and understood that responding to a disaster meant relying on a city-wide network of neighbours helping one another.
“that’s what community response looks like.”
on tuesday, the ottawa food bank announced that spooner has been appointed its new chief executive officer following a national search. she had served as interim ceo for the last six months after her predecessor, rachael wilson, left in january to lead united way east ontario.
the new title prompted questions at spooner’s home: when she told her two young sons she was becoming ceo, they wanted to know whether that meant she’d still get to help people.
“yes,” she told them. “i just get to do it with a different hat.”
“oh, good,” they replied. “because we like what you do.”
spooner takes over as demand for food assistance continues to reach unprecedented levels. last year, the food bank’s member organizations recorded 588,866 visits — more than double the number in 2019.
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anyone expecting a dramatic change in direction, however, is likely to be disappointed.
spooner has spent the past 15 years helping shape the organization she now leads, working under ceos peter tilley, michael maidment and wilson as the food bank evolved from an emergency provider into something much broader.
it has grown from helping people through temporary crises to becoming a routine part of their lives. people, spooner says, aren’t coming through their doors because of one bad month. they’re returning because housing costs, food prices and inadequate incomes have combined into something more permanent.
“the hard thing to say is that food banking has become systemic.”
as we talked, two ideas kept resurfacing .
the first was how rarely spooner talked about the ottawa food bank as a stand-alone organization. instead, she kept returning to “the network” — the web of member agencies, volunteers and community partners working together.
it was telling that, when asked what moment stood out most from her 15 years with the organization, she chose the derecho, a day when the community simply came together.
the second was how the food bank has rethought its role. it can’t lower grocery prices or rents, nor can it rewrite provincial income-support programs. but it can advocate, listen and do the work within its control as well as possible.
“what do we have ownership on?” spooner asks. “if we’re going to be doing this, then we should do it really, really well. if we have to catch people when they fall, we should be able to catch them really well, because they are in crisis.”
she points to another pivotal moment — the launch of the food bank’s health smart program in 2017, an initiative she helped drive.
developed with ottawa public health, it marked a fundamental shift. rather than deciding what people needed, the food bank started listening more carefully to what clients themselves wanted. it expanded access to fresh, nutritious food, became more culturally responsive in its food choices, and increasingly recognized that people often needed more than just groceries.
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“the food bank can be your front door,” spooner says — connecting people with employment supports, counselling and other community services.
one complaint convinced her they were heading in the right direction.
a caller was upset that the vegetables received from the food bank were covered in dirt.
“i said, ‘i think i know what you’re talking about,’” spooner recalls, “‘because i saw them in our warehouse this morning. we got them straight from our farm. they’re straight from farm to table, but you wouldn’t see them in the grocery store because they’re not packaged like that.’”
the caller’s response surprised her.
“‘i’m getting stuff fresh from a farm? that has never happened to me before.’
“and when i hung up,” spooner says, “i thought, ‘that’s probably the best complaint i’ve ever received.’”
the exchange has stuck with her.
“it makes a real difference,” she says. “the things that we try — we may pilot them, we may fail, then we try again. we might not be perfect in our response, but we’ll keep trying different responses. that’s what keeps us going.”
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