Vandals feast on food bank donations

DENISE RIDEOUT

Thieves broke into Iqaluit’s food bank days before Christmas, helped themselves to some munchies and drinks and sprayed juice all over the place.

Food bank volunteers learned of the break-in when they went to their office, located in the Blue Dome building, on Dec. 28.

The Niqinik Nuatsivik Nunavut food bank feeds about 200 families in Iqaluit each week.

“[The vandals] basically helped themselves to some beverages, ate a little food and made a big mess,” Natalie Plato, treasurer of the food bank, said of the incident.

“They’d obviously had keys. They got the keys somehow and got into the food bank,” she said.

Fortunately, the thieves were more interested in making a mess than carting off loads of food.

“What we think they did was just go in there and they ate some take-out food because there was take-out in there and drank some of our juice and just threw it around and made a mess,” Plato said.

Volunteers found juice on the walls and equipment. A computer keyboard was ruined because of it.

But volunteers are unclear of how much food was actually taken during the break-in.

“We had so much donations that we didn’t have a good inventory of what we had. So we don’t know what is missing,” Plato said.

Plato said the incident could have been much worse. Fortunately, she said, the culprit didn’t dig into the large supply of food Iqaluit residents had donated just before Christmas.

On Dec. 13, Iqalungmiut gave $1,000 and cart loads of food to volunteers who had set up a food drive at NorthMart.

The food bank had put out a plea for food after its cupboards went bare the week before.

The Christmas break-in didn’t put much of a dint into their food supply.

“We’re doing really well,” Plato said. “We had such a good response from everyone over Christmas that we’re stocked for probably another month or so.”