The Unstoppable Lionhearted
The seeds of Lionhearts, and a keen insight into its success, can both be found within a humble berry. First, the seeds.
Travis Blackmore grew up in Saint John, N.B., “playing drums in church and stuff like that.” He moved to Kingston, Ont.,and “found my way into the music industry as a hired gun.” He toured the world with Juno winners Manic Drive, Manafest and others, and played “every state in the U.S., except Hawaii.” He left the gruelling life on the road in 2012 for a more stable family life, and got a job in retail management.
“Food rescue was kind of a buzzword back then,” Blackmore recalls in an interview, his stocky energy and mid-back-length haircut the only vestiges of rock-and-roll drummer life. “A friend of mine worked at Costco and he said, ‘If you are really passionate about that, I could get you a meeting with the manager, maybe you could start rescuing the food that we throw away.’”
Blackmore was excited, but had no plan. He would have to be at Costco at 6 a.m. every day to pick up whatever was there, take it away to sort, discard whatever was unusable, and then “take whatever's left and distribute that or make meals or whatever you decide to do.
Day One, he arrives at the loading dock to find 800 pounds of fresh strawberries.
“I'm staring at it going, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done? I gotta be back tomorrow morning, and the next one, and the next one.’”
With helpers, he took three carloads of berries back to the church kitchen run by his father. He called Marilyn McLean at the Kingston Street Mission.
“I said, ‘I’ve got some strawberries, are you interested?’ She’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, I'll take whatever you got.’ And Isaid,’ Well, I’ve got about 800 pounds of strawberries.’ She's like, ‘Could I have eight or 10 of the cartons’ and I said ‘yeah, absolutely. I'll bring them right down.’ I hung up the phone and sitting there. Now I’ve 790 pounds of strawberries.
“That’s how Lionhearts was born, how we found out a lot of frontline agencies aren't able to handle 800 pounds in one go and then come back again the next day and the next day. We basically found our way into being a distribution charity, if you will, and word got out quick.”
That was 2014.
Three years later, Lionhearts — named for Aslan, the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia — expanded to Ottawa, and in2023 it got its own space in the city, a warehouse in Stittsville. Stephen La Salle, a chef known for his work at Cocotte Bistro and the Albion Rooms, is operations manager.
La Salle has his own strawberry reference, and it hinges on an essential insight into Lionhearts’ success — knowing who needs what, and when. He mentions the berries during a quick tour of the commercial kitchen that is part of the rented workspace(which formerly housed a BBQ-sauce business).
“Did you know that some food banks spend $1,000 a month on jam? Not everyone eats peanut butter, so they spend money buying jam. What if,” La Salle, says “we get some berries donated? I can make the jam and get (food banks’) cost down.”
Lionhearts is built on such current knowledge, merged with resourceful thinking and flexibility.
“We're not in a silo here,” he says. “We're reaching out to partners asking, how can we help you? What do you need?”
The warehouse is abuzz with things coming and going. Donated goods and food are picked up daily or weekly from Costco, Amazon, caterers and other food services that partner with the organization. Lionhearts distributes loads of material daily to many of its community partners, and it doesn’t tell partners how to distribute the food or goods. During edible's visit, a volunteer uses a forklift to load five pallets of housewares onto a truck owned by a local charity, Helping With Furniture, that sets up homes for those in need, with everything from furniture to lamps to cleaning supplies.
“We’ve got a network of over 100 community partners,” LaSalle says. “You’re not just giving to Lionhearts, you're giving to 100 community partners that are affecting thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people in this entire area.”
With so many logistics at play, organization is key.
Each day has a clipboard hung on the wall — “Tuesday, Britannia Woods Food Pantry, Winthrop Court Community House, Michele Heights Community House.” A whiteboard lists items to come, or go, to Lionhearts Kingston, as the two locations are integrated — pens, shampoo, art supplies, storage bins and at the bottom, “Energy drinks — staff.”
Suffice to say that everyone at Lionhearts, including close to 50 staff and almost 500 volunteers between the two cities, can use the boost. On the wall of the corner of the warehouse designated as a shared office, a neon sign on the wall says, “Good vibes.”
The variety of items crammed and stacked in the warehouse is dizzying — school supplies, clothes, medical supplies, detergents, hardware, software. There are deluxe sets of Hot Wheels and trendy water bottles and stacks of underwear for children, men and women.
During the pandemic, with some community partners closing, Lionhearts started to cook some of the food it was gathering. “By the end of the pandemic (our) kitchenteam had served over 350,000 meals in the Kingston area,” Blackmore says.
It also expanded to offer housing and vocational training for broader community support. The City of Kingston asked Lionhearts to open a homeless shelter. “If that’s what’s needed, then yep, we'll go for it,” Blackmore says. Food remains its, well, bread and butter.
In Kingston, Lionhearts runs a Community Nutrition Program, a Student Food Box Program and other programs, out of its approximately 13,000-square-foot warehouse off the Sit John A. Macdonald Parkway near the old Alcan factory. (Ottawa’s is closer to 4,400 square feet.)
The food comes in many forms, on a typical day, from the fabled fresh strawberries, to loaves and buns from Cobs Bakery, produce from Farm Boy, fresh mushrooms from Heartee, dozens of cooked hot dogs from TD Lansdowne Stadium and packaged meals and surplus prepared food from various partners.
One day, they got 2,000 pounds of squash from Acorn Creek Farms. They have an entire pallet of Pop Tarts. A memo on the wall reminds La Salle to pick up food from Ashbury College. Wherever there is food to be had, La Salle says, “I'll show up personally, in a refrigerated van.”
They also use donated equipment, including a valuable Combi oven, a gift from Kemptville Pentecostal Church. A smaller piece of gear, a grain mill, recently showed up on an Amazon pallet. “If we can get some grains, we can mill it, bag it and get flour to food banks.” Nothing goes to waste.
“When we have food we can’t get rid of, we will call a pig farmer to come pick it up.” “We’re looking for another warehouse,” says Blackmore, who moved to Ottawa with his family in 2019. “We need one that’s probably six times the size, to be honest, but ‘We’re doing what we can with what we have’ is kind of what our story has been all along.”
Lionshearts Inc.
779 Sir John A. MacDonald Blvd., Unit 6, Kingston, Ont.
119 Iber Rd. Unit 1, Stittsville, Ont.
lionsheart.ca | 613-766-0664| @lionsheart.ygk
