In our last blog post, we brought you stories of local businesses and citizens supporting each other. Let’s keep it up by sharing the love and spirit of community that’s been flourishing in this city we call home. 

This time, we’re focusing on the hard-working people who are making sure every Torontonian has enough to eat, and all of those working at the frontlines of COVID-19, from healthcare professionals to grocery store clerks to cleaning staff.  

From books to food banks

One incredible story that we’ve read is how the Toronto Public Library (TPL) partnered with North York Harvest, Daily Bread, and Second Harvest food banks to set up distribution from library branches across the city as alternate service locations. 

As TPL area manager Gail MacFayden explains, it all came together after a third of the food banks in the city closed down because either their venues closed or volunteers didn’t want to expose themselves. With food available and many Torontonians in need, food banks needed distribution centres, and library branches — already central hubs in the city’s communities —  were put into action.

The TPL’s massive distribution centre on Ellesmere Road was also deep-cleaned, disinfected, and converted into a warehouse for food.

“People shouldn’t worry about finding enough to eat along with everything else,” said MacFayden. “I loved my job before, but now it feels extra great to come to work every day.” 

Community love

Moving to the Waterfront neighbourhood, we want to give a special shout-out to Toronto resident Jennifer Evans, who, along with the Waterfront BIA, helped spearhead an initiative in the community to make sure the homeless and food insecure have essentials like food and toiletries. 

It takes a village ... thank you to everyone who helped with no-contact purchase and assembly of these kits! I’ll go through how you can help too later today after we drop off ... special thx to Meredith, Bethanne, Cat and D+S!! And June for the Sobeys bags ❤️ #Toronto #homeless pic.twitter.com/WT1tslQOec

— jennifer evans (@nejsnave) April 4, 2020

Local families assemble the kits, including prepared foods like sandwiches and items such as disinfectant wipes, painkillers, lotion, Kleenex and lip balm. Contactless pick-ups/drop-offs are arranged through DMs and kits are then distributed.  

Frontline Heroes

One Toronto doctor noticed that as his colleagues have gone above and beyond in recent weeks, morale has fallen. Dr. Gray Moonen felt those on the frontlines had not been getting as much recognition as they deserved. 

As a result, the family medicine resident at the University of Toronto and University Health Network started documenting the faces and stories of those working around him, sharing them on his Twitter page.

"Working through this pandemic has honestly been surreal. People are anxious, health-care providers, the public, friends, family, patients," Moonen said to CBC Toronto. "I wanted to bring a certain level of humanity to this crisis."

“It was the right thing to do”

Finally, to help make sure healthcare workers are properly protected, Ontario edtech company InkSmith jumped into action, using their 3D printers and laser cutters to start mass-producing plastic face shields — i.e. The Canadian Shield. The key was when they realized that a 3D printer took an hour to fabricate a face shield, but a laser cutter only takes 30 seconds.

"We’ll be running around the clock for the foreseeable future," said CEO Jeremy Hedges, who brought in 30 new workers for the assembly line, and oversees a dozen laser cutters working to mass-produce shields — with plans to scale up even more. 

“We teach kids in school to empathize with someone who has a problem, come up with ideas for how to fix it, and use the tools at hand to solve it,” said Hedges. “That’s exactly what we’ve done.”