My mom lives on Christian Island. I've got a cottage there too — I'm a Beausoleil First Nation member, and I grew up summering with the community, knowing many of the full-time residents. So when March 2020 hit and the lockdown closed the island to visitors, the first thing I did was call her to see how she was doing.
What she told me wasn't great. Chief Guy Monague and council had limited people to one mainland trip per week. The ferry hours were cut. If you had a doctor's appointment that week, you had to choose: medical visit or grocery shop. You couldn't fit both in. The seniors — and there are a lot of seniors on the island, my mom included — had spent the previous fall doing what they always do: putting up bulk food for winter. By March, everything in the freezer was a brick. Nothing fresh.
I'd already been planning a career change. Kristin and I had talked about possibly opening a fruit and vegetable market on Christian Island — that was the slow-burn version of this idea. The pandemic made it the now-version. I called Chief and council and asked if I could deliver fresh fruit and vegetables to full-time residents on a weekly basis, as an emergency service. They said yes.
That's how Brian's Food Baskets started. The first runs were just Friday ferries from Cedar Point — me, the truck, a load of produce from the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto and Barrie Hill Farms locally, and a list of names. The Beausoleil Family Health Centre got involved early, commissioning food boxes for residents with diabetes and young families. That contract is part of why the truck has kept coming back every week, year-round, ever since.
The mainland route filled in by word of mouth. People in Barrie, Orillia, Midland, Penetanguishene, and Elmvale heard about the island deliveries and asked if they could be on the route too. Tuesday became the second delivery day. The truck started doing two full loops a week. Kristin runs the sourcing side now — local where we can, Toronto market where the variety calls for it. "We're surrounded by farmers," she said in that 2020 interview. "So we tried to keep it local." Six years later, that's still the model.
The route hasn't really changed. Same truck. Same days. Same hand picking out the strawberries — and yes, if the strawberries don't look right that morning, I'll call you and pick something better. There's no app. No third-party drivers. No substitutions you didn't ask for. Just one grocer, picking the same way you would, driving the same loop every week. That's the whole thing.
Janis Ramsay at Simcoe.com wrote about all of this back in December 2020, in their #COVIDHEROES series. I'm grateful for the piece — it brought us a lot of new mainland customers, and it captured what we were doing in those early months better than I would have known how to. The original article is linked below.
If you're in Barrie, Orillia, Midland, Penetanguishene, Elmvale, or on Christian Island and you'd like to be on the route, send your list. Sundays by 3 pm for Tuesday delivery, Wednesdays by 3 pm for Friday. Or just call — the number is on the contact page. I'll pick up unless I'm driving.
— Brian