THUNDER BAY – Thanksgiving can be tough for those who don’t have a lot.
Whether it’s poverty or homelessness, holidays most people take for granted can be a tough reminder to the less fortunate that things aren’t going as well as they may like.
The Dew Drop Inn’s annual Thanksgiving dinner is a chance for people to forget their troubles for an hour or so, enjoy a good meal and for a few minutes, find comfort and camaraderie with others.
Sloan Monahan said the dinner is always a popular one.
“We find it’s our busiest day of the year. We’re projecting for about 700 people today,” said Monahan, operations manager at the Dew Drop Inn, an organization that provides meals to those in need all throughout the year.
Staff and volunteers went all out to ensure their guests got the best possible meal, with all the Thanksgiving trimmings.
“We’ve got 32 turkeys prepared for this that the RFDA prepared for us. We have 10 things of mashed potatoes ready to go and we have 400 helpings of pumpkin pie,” Monahan said.
Giving back is what it’s all about, he added.
“Words don’t do justice for how much we appreciate it,” Monahan said. “The ongoing support we get from the community to provide us with the opportunity to do what we do every day, to try to provide a nutritious, delicious meal, it means the world to all of us here.”
Gary Christian, a volunteer at the Dew Drop Inn, said it’s tradition to lend a hand at the soup kitchen.
“Our family has done this for about 14 years now. We do Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter, just to come out and help the people that need to get fed,” Christian said. “There’s a lot of people hungry out there and today is a day of celebration. So we’re going to help them celebrate those days.”
