By Sarah Jensen, Regional Food Systems Coordinator, FAN-NWO
What do regional food systems mean to you in Thunder Bay?
Many people know of community gardens, school farm-to-table initiatives, local farmers markets, food hamper programs, and restaurants serving local food – but how do all these things connect? The answer lies in thirty years of grassroots organizing around food systems in Thunder Bay, and the new chapter being written by the Food Action Network of Northwestern Ontario (FAN-NWO).
To understand the future of food systems work in Thunder Bay, we have to know where we’ve grown from. In 1995, the Thunder Bay Food Action Network was formed to support grassroots action on food security, access, and sustainability. Community events, forums, and summits led to the Thunder Bay Food Charter in 2008, a landmark policy that embedded food justice into local governance. Once we had a Food Charter, we needed a strategy to bring it to life.
This created the Thunder Bay + Area Food Strategy (TBAFS), launched in 2014 to help build a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient food system. This led to tools like the Community Food System Report Cards (2015 and 2023), which help track the health of our food system over time. Over the years, TBAFS helped launch or support many initiatives, including the Indigenous Food Circle, TBayInSeason, the Food Access Coalition, and Canada’s first municipal-level Emergency Food Plan. Now incorporated as a non-profit, and bearing a “new” name that calls back to the seeds planted in the 90s, FAN-NWO continues to grow that legacy.
Food action, for me, has been a part of my own history and future: as a toddler “helping” my mom run a community garden, as a teenager working on local farms and running my own neighbourhood’s community garden, accessing food subsidy programs as a young adult, to my work now at FAN-NWO. You have connections to the local food movement too – whether you’ve bought local produce in a grocery store, visited a farm to celebrate the harvest, picked up a holiday food hamper, grown your own food, or donated to a food bank. Food not only nourishes our body but nourishes community – whether it’s sitting down to share a meal with friends and family, bringing local and fresh meals to seniors’ residences, or helping school kids learn how the carrots in their lunch came from the soil in Slate River Valley. We all have a history and a future in our food system, and each of us can help shape a more connected, equitable, sustainable – and delicious – future.
Charles Levkoe, Chair of the FAN-NWO Board and Canada Research Chair in Equitable and Sustainable Food Systems at Lakehead University, reflects on the organization’s next phase:
“The TBAFS has been a centre-point for organizations and individuals working across northwestern Ontario. As we transition to FAN-NWO, we’ll continue to build the network, better understand pressing concerns across the region, and learn from the amazing people and groups working to build a more equitable and sustainable food system for all.”
Like the cycles of farmers’ crops from seed to harvest, our work has grown from the Thunder Bay Food Action Network, to Thunder Bay + Area Food Strategy, to the Food Action Network of Northwestern Ontario. We’re excited to mark this new era with a feast of food action in our region, and continued growth towards better food futures.
If you would like to get involved with FAN-NWO, or find out more, please visit our website nwofood.ca, find us on social media (@nwofood).
