Greg brings his love of food to PARC
“A couple of cases of limes came in one day, and for 48 hours I wondered what they’d do with all of them,” Greg says.
Greg watches what comes off PARC’s donation trucks with a keen eye. With decades of experience as a butcher, meat manager and in food sales, he knows all about what goes on in a kitchen. When the limes arrived, he asked William, a fellow member who works in PARC’s kitchen, what the plan was for them. He tracks the spices too, then looks for them in the food.
“So I pay attention,” he says. “I’ll taste a soup and think, ‘There’s thyme in there.’”
A small community
Greg learned about PARC in a little red booklet given to him by a worker at LOFT Community Services, while he was spending the winter at Union Station to stay out of the cold. It listed places across Toronto to eat, sleep and find clothes. “I thought I’d bop around and check out the food places,” he says. “Something to do. I’m a food guy.”
PARC stood out. “I came out here and I liked it. You’re allowed to sit, you’re allowed to eat. The more I sat around and watched everybody, the more I realized it was a small, village-type community, because of how long it’s been here and how long people have been coming.”
“I like the history of [the organization]” Greg says. “I pop into other food places and talk to the staff, and they speak well of PARC.” Greg has been coming to the drop-in every day since early summer.
Bread and butter
Greg grew up just north of Peterborough, a country boy bussed into school. “We didn’t watch TV or play games,” he says. “We built forts in the forest.”
He apprenticed as a butcher in the Bay of Quinte area, under a man who ran a beef farm and four butcher shops from Campbellford to Belleville. Greg worked the farm, filling in wherever a shop was short and driving the beef truck on deliveries. His favourite days were when the owner let him do deliveries in a ‘66 Charger from his personal car collection.
After his apprenticeship, Greg came to Toronto in the 1980s to work as a stockyard foreman. He went on to own his own energy drink company in Western Canada where he ran freelance events and trade shows.
“My original trade is walking into shops, showing them I can do the work and getting paid,” he says. “That’s been my bread and butter my whole life.”
Doors that no longer open
Greg spent more than 10 years at his last butcher shop, four of them on the front line, keeping people fed through the pandemic. He lost that job just shy of 60. A free legal adviser told him that, at his age and in that economy, he would probably never work again.
Greg kept handing out résumés anyway, in Peterborough and Toronto. One grocery store meat manager told him, “I’d hire you yesterday, but I can’t hire off the street.” The manager sent him to apply online, but neither Greg nor the support worker helping him could find the application.
A meat plant offered him a job as a security guard, but said that he needed photo ID for the job. He says he went to Service Canada and they updated his address but forgot to mail the photo ID. When Greg went back six weeks later, the job was gone.
Being out of work took a toll on Greg. “I feel like I aged 20 years in 20 minutes,” he says. He now walks a mile a day to keep his body in shape. “Over the last year I’ve got back to where I can move my body. I’m feeling a lot better.”
Getting his A-game back
In October, Greg joined PARC’s annual camping trip at Camp Cedar Ridge. There he found a set of real horseshoes with steel pegs. He’d gotten good at the game in a backyard pit that one of his brother’s friends built when he was younger.
A member who had never seen horseshoes watched, then asked, “Show me how that’s done.” Greg ended up teaching three people to play. “That was one of my highlights,” he says. “I shook off my rust and got my A-game back.”
On the same trip, he put a fishing line in the water for the first time in more than 40 years. He landed the biggest perch he’d ever seen.
Trying something new
Greg says yes to new things all the time. A PARC worker once told him about concerts for seniors, and he went to his first opera. “I stayed the whole night,” he says. “My first one ever.” At PARC, he’s tried yoga and stays for the music program on Thursdays and Fridays. Art club was a new experience for him too. “I went to art club, which I’d never done before. My brother and my dad used to draw, so I thought I’d try it. I kind of like it, so I keep going back.”
The afternoon programs give him room to connect. “You get more one-on-one time in that setting, even with staff, instead of 40 people at once in the drop-in” he says. Greg is feeling that he fits in at PARC. “I’ve made three or four decent connections I can talk with.” He spent the summer under a tree by the lakefront, a short walk from PARC. “I did it all summer, and I think it actually healed me a little.”
Ready when you are
Every day, PARC’s member volunteers help make the drop-in a welcoming place. They greet people at reception, serve meals, pour coffee, lead activities and check in with other members. Along the way, they get on-the-job training, goal-setting support and mentorship that build skills and paths to employment.
Greg has been talking with the member volunteer team at PARC about where his experience fits.
“I would have liked to get into beverage, food, events and trade shows. I really enjoy all of it. That’s one reason I volunteer,” he says. “If you come up with something you’re working on, I’m at your call.”
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Greg is an experienced events professional and a member of the PARC community. PARC (Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre) is located at 1499 Queen Street West in Toronto. PARC has served the Parkdale community since 1980.
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