By Stephanie Mancini
Published December 2025
It has been a long journey since Wednesday October 31, 1984. That was the day, during a late afternoon meeting held by the Core Area Ministry Committee, when a decision was made to develop a downtown community meal service. The discussions that resulted in St. John’s Kitchen had been going on for more than a year. Churches and social services were recognizing that many people living in the downtown struggled to access a daily meal.
The momentum for this idea meant the project came together quickly. A plan was formed based on The Working Centre’s experience of operating the Unemployed Worker’s Centre that we had run out of the St. John’s Anglican Church’s gymnasium since January 1983. Rev. Cy Ladds and the wardens at St. John’s Anglican Church agreed to continue renting to The Working Centre. The next step was preparing the kitchen to meet fire and health codes. In the meantime, we visited Sr. Christine’s meal service in Guelph to learn more about serving a daily meal with donated food.
During these early years, The Working Centre was also running a small drop-in centre at 94A Queen Street South, above the offices of Global Community Centre. When we started there was a focus on unemployed auto workers who were being laid off from major auto parts companies like Budd Automotive and Lear Siegler, but soon we met people living in downtown rooming houses, youth needing work, people struggling with job searching and significant health issues, frustrated unemployed workers whose families were falling apart. Soon Maria George, who was part of the original Working Centre group started bringing sandwiches to the centre to share. We were learning that the economy with 19% interest rates was leaving people at the margins with few options for work and even less money for basic food. By the end of the summer of 1982, Maria George had advocated with the downtown churches about the importance of a place to offer free meals in downtown Kitchener.
This was the context for the October 31st meeting of the downtown churches where they agreed to support The Working Centre in opening St. John’s Kitchen, with each of the churches making a commitment of funds to get us started. St. John’s Kitchen opened officially in January of 1985 and is now a 40+ year tradition of offering meals and a place of welcome in downtown Kitchener. What started as a community collaboration, continues as place of radical inclusion.
Now, fast-forward 41 years to October 31, 2025. This is the day we opened the newly built space for St. John’s Kitchen at 97 Victoria. There was the mad scramble of preparedness that came before the doors opened, but when opening day arrived, it was a beautiful site to see. Some 300 people walked through the doors that day. Some moved directly to orient themselves and access resources or food or washrooms. Many people sat down and stayed to talk, to eat, to just relax. The story of St. John’s Kitchen has led us through the years as we have watched the increasing dislocation created by loss of work, and now the deep devastation of the loss of housing and shelter in the midst of a drug epidemic. St. John’s Kitchen has played its role as a place-keeper, holding space for people who are often those most left behind in our changing times. St. John’s Church has stood with us in this place-keeping tradition – first, hosting us for 20 years in their church gym, and then welcoming us back during the construction of the new home for St. John’s Kitchen at 97 Victoria.
Earlier in October, we celebrated the opening of 97 Victoria in a series of open houses with all the people who contributed to make it happen, and the people who support us in the work of The Working Centre. What joy as we marked together the work of so many people who helped to make this space possible, and learned of all the good work that happens in and through St. John’s Kitchen. We marked this as a place of hope in the midst of much hardship.
One week in the new space, we are finding our balance, continuing to provide welcome to up to 400 people a day. One day we were on the hunt for people to help us load beds into the 97 Victoria housing units as we got ready to open this space. One person arrived to help who had a strong body. Two days earlier he had been experiencing an episode that left him so outside himself, we had involved police in helping to reduce the harm to himself and others. This day, he was helping us to move beds into our building and expressing gratitude to be included – he used to be a mover and he had good experience to share. He was included. We were as grateful for the reminder to do this work together, as we were by the work of moving heavy bed frames.
Another tale we heard of this moving journey was from the day before we moved to 97 Victoria. We were moving supplies from St. John’s Church to 97 Victoria. This would be on the last day before people accessed their monthly social assistance cheque, a day when all the money has run out and people are most anxious to receive supports. The kindness of St. John’s Kitchen was noticed by the team helping with the move – every request stopped the progress of the move, was received kindly, and people were helped.
It is this kindness, practiced daily that is the magic of St. John’s Kitchen. Focusing on moral beauty is a choice, a practice of daily living. A group of us recently listened together to a podcast by Christiana Figueres on Outrage and Optimism, where Kate Raworth encourages us to be part of “creating the conditions conducive to life”. As a community we have the ability to welcome people into warm spaces, to provide enough shelter, to create new housing, to create the conditions conducive to life.
We are walking into a winter where we will continue to stand witness to the harsh realities of people experiencing homelessness, people living unsheltered through the harsh winter months. Recently we responded to a fire in an encampment, supporting the people whose fragile shelter was rapidly destroyed, as we outfitted them with new equipment, treated burn wounds, but also mourned the loss and walked through the trauma of this disruption. As colder weather comes and people work to stay warm, these tragedies increase in number.
Every beautiful act of kindness in our work is also underlined by the grief that knows we have the power needed to create the conditions conducive to life, the capacity to recognize people as full members of our community – and yet people remain in inhumane living conditions.
One of our team members reflected that we are witness to many acts of moral beauty in our work, helping a person at a time, but also being embedded in the wider web of the Working Centre community, a growing group of people acting in to make good work possible.
We recognize at this time of year all the people who contribute to this community – the people who work daily to stand in hope, the volunteers who make the many small and big acts of daily caring possible, the many donors who share resources to make this frugal and abundant work possible. We stand together in witness, in determination, in hope.
