Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Napanee Salvation Army’s services are about to get a lot more mobile following the arrival of an Emergency Disaster Services (EDS) canteen truck.
Recently the vehicle rolled into the parking lot of the Napanee Salvation Army, arriving from northern Ontario. Essentially a kitchen on wheels, the truck is able to travel throughout the region to help those in need.
“It is a commercial kitchen which means we can provide meals to people in the community who are not able to purchase their own food for meals,” said Abigail Mills, director of community ministries for the Napanee Salvation Army. “It’s going to be an additional meal source to the community.”
The Napanee truck is one of 19 Salvation Army EDS vehicles across the province. It will remain based in Napanee but will travel to areas such as Kingston and Gananoque as needed.
“(Napanee is) a good location because it’s close to Kingston and there’s lots of communities around here,” said Trevor McLellan, EDS specialist with Salvation Army who dropped the truck off with Dean Gregory on April 25. “The next closest truck is Belleville or Ottawa. This part of the province, there’s potential for disasters to happen and enough of a population that waiting for a canteen truck from Ottawa may not be practical. There is a demand from a street outreach point of view. As much as it says Emergency Disaster Services on it and it seems all important to go out to disasters, it’s the day-to-day stuff that it is most important. So having it available and providing those community meals is the biggest thing. But if something bad happens, such as a flood in the area, having it close by as opposed to having to wait a couple of hours for one is just strategically a useful location.”
Though it will always be on stand by to roll out to an emergency-be it a flood, major collision or weather disaster just to name a few, it will be put to good use helping the local community. That could mean delivering warm meals to those struggling to afford groceries or delivering cold or warm drinks to those lacking shelter on unseasonably hot or freezing days.
Mills began pushing for Napanee to be a location for an EDS truck after she saw firsthand their impact while she was assisting Ottawa flooding victims in 2019.
“You could just see the relief for the people coming who had been doing everything that they could do to stave off the water from their homes and the volunteers that would come to fill the sandbags, to know that there was a friendly face, to know that there was food, there was water and there was emotional and spiritual care which is something that Salvation Army provides to people in crisis,” said Mills. “It was so rewarding and that’s what inspired the passion for this in me.”
Now that they’ve secured a vehicle, they’ll need volunteers willing to undergo specialized training to work on the vehicle.
“People who are comfortable working in a confined environment in a high paced, sometimes in quite a bit of stress because of the situation that you’re in but at the end of the day you make a difference in that situation,” Mills said of the volunteers they need.
They also require people with a commercial vehicle operator’s license.
To learn how to get involved, call 613-354-7633. The Napanee salvation Army is located at 81 Dairy Ave.