The holiday meals, and the calendar

So... the holiday meals list from TDIN is out. And it's been LEAKED!!!! Oh my god oh my god oh my god! They stopped publishing it online, so there is absolutely no way to view it on the internet except, of course, on this site. Because somebody uploaded it to their google docs and posted it. And then it got compared to the Calendar page on this site, which got heavily updated. And then it got embedded below:



There are some clear discrepancies between this schedule and the regular mealtimes of a lot of these places. So there are some details to clear up, but the calendar is much more accurate than it was six hours ago. Many, many disappointing closures have been marked, so hopefully some heartbreak can be avoided./

It's worth noting that there are way, way more closures than extra holiday meals. Way more. Way, way fucking more.

The other thing, this is silly, but Sistering and 416 Dundas, the two major places specifically for women, weren't on the site at all, and now they are. It's pretty startling to finally be able to add a couple of programs that are just two meals every single day, at the same time. Not a few days a week at three different times, not every third and fourth sunday of some bullshit, but every single day of the week, at the same times. And the hours of the drop-in are: 24/7. It's like a whole other world, especially for women. Where you don't have to go all over the city every single day, where you can go to the same place for two or even three meals each day. And you can just go there anytime you need to. That's absolutely amazing. That must be wonderful. It makes a lot more sense why men in poverty are so much more visible: they have to stay on the move, and the women are all hidden away at the women-only programs. There's only one breakfast and lunch program that's open every single day, and includes men, and it's the Good Shepherd.

The 519 finally goes LGBTQ-only

It's always tough, that time you show up where it's the first time you can't be there. Either because the program's ended, moved, changed times, or like in this case, you became not the right demographic.

It's especially tough when it's the only place you can go, and you're already hungry, and you've come a long way. That's what many people are going through at the entry to the 519's sunday breakfast and lunch programs. We used to be greeted with an open door and a lineup... now there's a sign-in desk.

Hopefully this improves things for LGBTQ soup kitchen users. As it was, the 519 was a place where they could share a meal with their straight buddies. So this won't just impact a lot of people's food security - it'll impact friendships as well.

It's sad, too. Apart from The Stop, the 519 is the only place where the staff actually know what's in the food. And maybe PARC. And maybe 40 Oaks? And why the change? Was it a matter of their funding being diluted? Was their program just becoming too popular to manage? Were they unable to keep the place safe and secure, with straight cis people included? Was it just too much of a gap to bridge?

It was probably because it was just too fucking crowded.

Can The Stop take the lining up out of lining up?

The Stop is trying something monumental. They're trying to innovate their way into a more convenient food bank experience. They're trying to hack one of society's most evil necessary evils: the line. And they might have succeeded.

So here's their scheme: they just don't throw people's tickets out of the stack if they're not around when their number's called. They just keep calling everybody's numbers, in order, until they're at the end of the list, and then they start over. Apparently. This is the before-actually-experiencing-it article. So the idea is, you decide when you want to come back, and whenever you do come back, your wait time will be quick enough that, overall, you're spending less time waiting, and you're not waiting until significantly later in the day to complete the task.

The schedule, as of late 2015, is:

10am hand out numbers for the food bank
11am food bank starts up
noon: lunch in their meal program
Food bank numbers are called all afternoon. They're called in sequence, even if they've already been called and the person hasn't been there. So people can bail out and come back whenever they want in the afternoon, and whenever they come back, their place in line has basically been held.
3pm they close, so you can show up at 10am and then go do some other stuff, and come pick up your food in the afternoon. So you can avoid the entire lunch scene, if you want.

Everybody be warned and tell your pregnant or breastfeeding friends that Wednesdays is on reserve for them. If you're not pregnant or breastfeeding, don't come Wednesdays.

And they're not doing the food bank on Tuesdays anymore. So it's just Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Also, men really should consider going to the monday men's cooking program. Because apart from learning cooking stuff, you get a meal during the program, and at least another meal to take home with you, so that's two meals just for learning some kitchen stuff.

This website is doing really well... because our lives are horseshit

So, this site gets about a hundred fucking hits a day. That's sad. Overall, the calendar has been viewed about twenty thousand times. So has the article about ODSP payment dates. That's pretty fucked. Almost all the site's traffic comes from Google. Almost all that traffic comes from search terms related to finding meal programs, or finding out when ODSP payments come out. But finally, an actual website, not just a comment, but an actual website, has linked to this one. Thank fucking god:

Like this site, it's completely anonymous. And mysterious. Whatever.

Anyway, this site gets good search engine recognition because it provides decent content. Actually, it does well because other sites don't provide that content. Other sites don't talk about ODSP payment dates, especially not government sites. Other sites don't talk about how our benefits compare with the cost of living... oh, wait, yes they do. Like newsmedia sites. Other sites don't talk about meal programs... oh, wait, yes they do - newsmedia articles, when they're talking about how easy it is to find a meal in Toronto and how you'd have to be "fat, lazy or stupid" in order to go hungry. I guess we all missed the part about "...or have any dietary restrictions whatsoever."

Anyway, this site does well because it's not bullshit, and because it's had time to do well. Here's how well it's doing:

Every once in awhile, we get a bigass spike to like 200 hits in one day, wow!

And then, of course, some months are busier than others, like December:

Of course, the big SEO curse is not being able to index for the name of your own site. So of course it's a good thing to come in number one for this. And I'll take any chance to rub it in everyone else's face. Especially since they've got the jobs I wanted when I was trying to be a web designer.

And of course, now that it's November, people are starting to wonder about Christmas... don't worry guys, I'm sure it'll be even worse this year than it was last year. Somehow.

So, yeah. This site rules, and its rising popularity is only making our voices of outrage louder and louder.

So when do ODSP payments come out for December of 2015? Is Christmas coming early again? And what was that crazy holiday overpayment and the clawbacks all about? It's such a fantastic and mysterious time of year!

Short version:

This year, ODSP payments go out on December 22nd, 2015. That's when ODSP recipients get paid.

Long version:

So, usually, ODSP payments go out on the last bank day of the month. So if the last day lands on a weekday that is not a holiday, then it's on the last day of the month. Otherwise, it's on the last bank day before that.

But last year, ODSP payments went out on the 22nd, for direct deposit, anyway. That's over a week early.

Of course, the government doesn't publish any information about when benefits payments go out, or what their formula is for deciding. They actually don't have control over it: the system released millions in random, extra payments this year. I got one, it was about fifteen hundred bucks. They're clawing it back fifty bucks a month. Anyway.

So, it seems like there's no formula for December's payment. But for whatever reason, it'll apparently come out on December 22nd.

Still no word on why they don't publish the formula or the schedule. They're just continually evasive about it, in every channel. It might differ by municipality or postal code or something. It's just creepy that they won't publish it. Especially given that it's obviously a popular question, given that the articles about it on this website have received over ten thousand page views.

A few legit comments have been tagged as spam, sorry... it's been fixed

So... Blogger's a bit funny sometimes... it tries to help out, you know... but it tagged a few people's posts as spam, omitting them for that reason. It didn't catch any actual spam, either. This, added to the fact that their search feature absolutely will not work, almost has me reaching for another CMS. Unfortunately, WordPress is an absolute filthy, stinking pile of vomit-encrusted fecal insanity, and the other ones aren't worth mentioning. Unless there's another one that is worth mentioning, in which case, please do mention it below, in the comments. Because at some point, Google is going to realize I'm using their product to criticize my government's murderous weaponization of their benefits programs, and I'll lose my Blogger account. It's like any job, no matter how carefully you follow the rules, there's always something they can nail you on. They make sure of it. So at some point it will need to switch to another service. If things really come down to it, of course, I can just make the whole thing in HTML and CSS. After all, that's what I used to do for a living. Before reality caught up with me.

Toronto Meal Programs continues to gain traffic... it's getting closer and closer to profitability!

"Profitability?" Yeah. Profitability. As in, at some point, this site is going to get so much traffic that it'll be able to generate money from advertisements, and that money will go to some kind of food security initiative. Best case, we might one day see a 27-hour organic soup kitchen (just a window, really), funded through this site and some other fundraising efforts. That'd be the day.

So these days, the site gets about fourty page views a day. So that's like... twenty people visiting the front page, then going to the calendar. Or ten people checking out the calendar plus three articles each. Something like that. It's peaking at around 200+ pageviews on some busy days, and there's still some days that are so dead that nobody visits the site. But those are becoming more and more rare. The curve you can see in the usage chart below shows how the site gets used a bit more at the beginning and end of each month... that's probably entirely due to the extremely popular article about ODSP payment dates. Because it's the only article that tells the public, accurately, when ODSP payments are released. The government keeps that information a secret. So that's an article that isn't even about meal programs, but already it's gotten over 1300 page views, and a ton of comments.

Here's the main searches that are bringing people to the site, over the past month (pretty typical):

odsp payment dates	24
odsp payment dates 2015	9
http://torontomealprograms.blogspot.com/p/meal-programs-calendar-agenda.html?m=1	8
odsp payment dates 2015 direct deposit	6
free meals toronto	5
http://torontomealprograms.blogspot.com/2013/05/churchoftheredeemer.html	5
http://torontomealprograms.blogspot.com/2013/06/scadding-court-monthly-meal.html	3
odsp dates 2015	3
when does odsp come out	3
do ontario disability cheques come out before cheistmas	2

The most common search term that brings people to the site is "free meals toronto," second most popular is the ODSP payment dates thing, third most popular is "free food toronto."

At this point, if there are any organizations interested in sponsoring a meal or something in exchange for ad space on this site, it's time to get in touch.

Poor, artsy Toronto Youth between 16 and 29 years can finally chill: Sketch is back, with meals!

The new space at Artscape Youngplace is finally, finally, finally ready. And they're serving their first lunch this Tuesday, September 22nd.

The map and calendar on this site have been updated with the new information. If you're between 16 and 29, and you need food, check this out. If you're into making art, stick around after lunch.

Sketch can be sketchy, but its food standards have always been ahead of the pack. That's because from sourcing to serving, they're not afraid to integrate and innovate: integrate the community and innovate to solve problems. So this is an important event for Toronto in terms of food security, but even more so in terms of social change and cultural development.

Meals are an important part of the Sketch program, because they enhance the health of their participants, but they're also critical to enable access to the rest of the programming. Young poor people can't go somewhere to do something unless there's a free meal involved. That's just a fact of life. But Sketch goes beyond that and provides substantial, healthy meals. At least, historically. So only because the food works, and wakes everybody up, then you've got a ton of youth who can engage in a unique artmaking opportunity. That's what brings Sketch beyond this industry that we have of using twenty bucks of funding money to deliver five bucks' worth of food to somebody who's just traveled for an hour to get there, and employ a bunch of people in the process. The Sketch crew actually have an excuse to get paid, beyond the fact that the public is more willing to make money by providing services to the poor, than they are to just give us the money we need to take care of ourselves. Simply put, people who aren't poor don't trust the poor. If they're going to help us out, they want to get something out of it, and they want it to be on their terms, in the form of programs. We use programs to get everything. Programs that cost more than the amount we'd need not to need the programs. But some programs are actually unique, and provide a useful social service while addressing a pressing need.

So it's good to see that Sketch is finally back, with lunch. Hopefully it's good lunch. And dinner.

Scott Mission and St. Felix info corrected on the Calendar

So there's this problem these days with Google Calendar, where repeating events are disappearing. If you notice any problems with the calendar, please leave a comment on one of the articles about it.

In this case, Scott Mission's lunch program was missing from the calendar for some period of time. It's unclear when it started.

As for the St. Felix lunch program listing, it was incorrect since St. Felix changed the timing of their lunch program. They shaved a half-hour off of it, and shifted it an hour later, so it starts at noon instead of eleven in the morning, and ends at 1pm instead of 12:25. So you can't use St. Felix to prepare for something that starts at noon anymore, but you don't have to sprint quite as fast to get there in the morning. So if you're doing the Scott Mission / St. Felix crawl, the timing is a bit better.

The New Vegetarian Food Bank

A vegetarian food bank for anyone who claims to be vegetarian or "trying to be" vegetarian. The next opening will be their third. Their first two were positioned on a funny date of the month: right after ODSP comes out. In a way, it was a good idea: reward people for their good planning, remind us that we're gonna run out of food money anyway, might as well get started with the free food early in the pay cycle, and maybe showing those who receive no benefits a bit of a break. But still, it was a bit confounding. Now they're planning on having it on the third saturday of each month. So... right when everybody's hurting real bad and it's hard to get anywhere or do anything. They're gonna get fucking swamped.

It's at 270 GERRARD ST. E., mercifully late in the day between noon and 4pm. It takes forever to get screened and wait for the food. But it's a big haul. Bring a big backpack or something. Bring bags full of bags. They've also been serving some great soups.

The site is http://tvfb.ca/, not http://www.vegfoodbank.ca/

Why is there no search function on this site like there used to be?

The search function keeps breaking and Google hasn't fixed it yet. It's happening on a lot of other sites. A workaround hasn't yet been found.

So if you want to search this site, here's what you do: go to Google.com, and enter this text (this works for any website) "site:torontomealprograms.blogspot.com" and then after that text, in the search box, but whatever your search terms are. So if you're looking for information about the Good Shepherd, your search is "site:torontomealprograms.blogspot.com good shepherd" or whatever.

Sorry about the hassle.

RIP Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre (CONC)

It's impossible to tell when this happened, but CONC is gone. It happened sometime before October of 2014. Apparently they're just temporarily gone. Nobody has any reason to believe or disbelieve this.

Their website is still up, and still listing their old address on Bloor St. West, and still listing their meal programs, like today's lunch:

No mention is made of the closure. The company responsible for their website is called The Wire. Maybe someone should contact them and let them know to change things. But they've most likely been out of contact with CONC since first designing their site, back in the day, whenever that was. This problem is typical of these multiservice agencies, and the sketchy relationships they have with those who do their web design. In general, they can't allow clients to work on their websites, since clients can't be trusted, and since nobody who has the keys to the site can afford to spend any time on it, and since communication between any of the parties involved is impossible. So, service agencies like CONC, when they're applying for funding, or when they have funding, find some web design agency that needs to do some charity work, or needs to do some portfolio-building work, they spend a month or so creating some evil monster that's impossible for the soup kitchen staff to maintain, and which they'll never have the time or the budget to touch again, and there you go. It floats in space forever. Telling people to show up at the abandoned storefront, every week.

Here's what the abandoned storefront looks like now. Notice the complete lack of any signage about where the new location is or what the new schedule is. The two things that are tacked up there are about a youth employment program, and a music event. Beautiful graffiti though.

This is typical of temporary or permanent closures. Users are not notified. The website continues to deliver inaccurate information. And sometimes, some other agency steps up. In this case, it's the Salvation Army. As famous for their discrimination as they are for their substandard food, this omnipresent charity superpower has picked up where CONC left off.

So now, instead of the best-quality food in the area, in a super cramped spot, where you can also go downstairs and book a recording session (if you're young), or laundry use (if you're organized), or get vegetarian food (if you're a vegetarian or a liar who wants to avoid meat), you can go a few blocks away, except on weekends, no more weekend meals, and get what you're a bit more used to. Something a bit more in line with what you'd find at the average soup kitchen. In the case of today's meal, it was bacon, a chunk of what is probably spam, undercooked potatoes, and salad. Or rather, lettuce.

To be precise, the new location is the dreaded Salvation Army, at 789 Dovercourt. And the new times are: Breakfast from 10am to 11am, and lunch from noon to 1pm. And the new days are Monday to Thursday. The only advantage is that Salvation Army's space is substantially larger. The crowd is still fairly sketchy, but there's more buffer space between people.

The Stop changed its hours!

The food bank now starts distribution at 11am, and they start handing out tickets at 10am. They also dropped their Tuesdays, and replaced it with their Good Food Market program... basically a popup grocery store every week. So yeah, that does cost money. Sucks for someone showing up at noon and finding only the meal program open, or showing up on, let's say, the last Tuesday of the month, and finding only food that costs money. But that's your problem for being desperate. Remember, one of the main rules of survival is: buffer your supply... as in, always get more before you run out. There are no guarantees. And don't pretend you're not in survival mode.

Wow, this site gets used a lot, comments are going unanswered, and the calendar is sketchy

Wow, this site gets used a lot. 78 pageviews yesterday. Over a hundred today. Most visits to the site start with a search like "free food in toronto" or "food banks in toronto" or something like that.

But the comments are going unanswered. It's bad. Comments from a year ago are just now getting responded to. They got lost in the shuffle. Nobody was paying attention, but that's changed.

The calendar is sketchy. Google's Calendar cloud software has a weird bug with repeating events. A permanent solution still hasn't been found! So that's bad.

Toronto Meal Programs (the website) passes the 10,000 visits mark

Now that the site has passed the 10,000 visits mark, it's time to release a bit more information about how people find the site.

The keyphrase at the root of most searches that bring people to this site is: "free meals toronto."

Several other keywords have revealed themselves to be important: Food, Laundry, Meals, and certain days of the week, specifically Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

The question is, are these keywords an indication of a bias towards these words in the site's content, or of the users' needs? Are we not seeing any popularity of "tuesday" in searches because there don't happen to be any articles on the site mentioning tuesdays? Or is it because saturday, sunday and monday are when people need meal programs the most, or when they're the least available? It's unclear. However, based on what little knowledge can be extracted from these statistics, a few ideas may be implemented:

Maybe some articles about food-gathering strategies for the various days of the week would be useful. And maybe expanding more into food-related topics beyond meal programs, and other services like laundry and communications access, would add value to the site. Expanding on listings of a broader range of services was already part of the plan, but the idea of articles for each day is a new one, specifically inspired by these stats. It's nice to have some stats, and for sites with no budget, it's great to have it included automatically, like it is in Blogger.

Here's some other fun stats:

This past month, the calendar was visited about 300 times. The map, not so much. It only got about 20 views. Over the whole history of the site, the map gets about one eighth the number of visits that the calendar does.

It's unclear how many individual users the site has, or how the user group breaks down in terms of how often they use the site. Stats indicating those facts are not available.

On average, the site gets between 8 and 30 visits per day. The site is probably more active during the latter half of each month. This is indicated but not quite verifiable in the available stats, and it also mirrors activity at meal programs. It's reflective of the social benefits payment schedule. Welfare recipients get paid near the end of the month, and Disability recipients get paid right at the end of the month, and both sets of benefits cover about a third of a person's monthly food needs. The tendency is to take a vacation from soup kitchens until the grocery money runs out, and then scramble to cover the discrepancy.

The site's activity has increased incrementally since it was first published in 2007:

From the looks of the chart, it really started to take off in 2011.

Well, those are some of the conclusions we can glean from Google's barebones but nicely-illustrated web stats. If you notice anything else about them that could lead to decisions on content or design, please leave a comment on this article.