Edmonton's Food Bank struggling after cancellation of Heritage Festival

Edmonton's Food Bank says it is in strong need of donations after the final day of Edmonton Heritage Festival was cancelled after heavy rain damaged infrastructure on Monday.

"The fact is that Edmonton's Food Bank, our numbers are exponentially high, astronomically high ... the volume of people we're serving," food bank spokesperson Tamisan Bencz-Knight told CBC about the impact of the cancellation.

"We're serving close to 40,000 people monthly through the hamper programs."

Edmonton Heritage Festival Association president Bruce Hogle said the holiday Monday usually draws the biggest crowds when he addressed the public earlier this week.

"We have 69 different pavilions, which represent about 90 different cultural groups. For them, this is going to be a huge, devastating factor, because not only are they down the revenues, but also the food costs and everything for that," Hogle said.

Organizers are calling for donations to make up this year's losses, and support dozens of non-profit cultural and community groups who rely on the festival as their biggest annual fundraiser, who now can't recoup their expenses on what they expected to be a three-day event.

A tent is partially collapsed at the Edmonton Heritage Festival on Aug. 5, 2024, after a thunderstorm overnight. (Craig Ryan/CBC)

Bencz-Knight said the need has nearly doubled from 21,000 people being helped each month in 2019.

"If you go to 2019, we were only buying $1.5 million worth of food, and now we're buying upwards to $3.5 to closer to $4 million worth of food a year to offset from what is being donated, to make sure that we have that food in the hampers," Bencz-Knight said.

The food bank has a campaign which spans the week before the festival starts and goes into the following week.

Last year's campaign raised over 31,000 kilograms of food as well as about $46,000 in support of the food bank's work.

Edmonton's Food Bank has partnered with Heritage Festival since 1983 when they hosted an information booth about donating and visitors proceeded to do so.

"It's just been a nice reciprocal back and forth in that ... they talk about cultural delicacies from around the world and food and we support individuals that need food, and realistically food brings us together," said Bencz-Knight.

"We celebrate together, we break bad news and mourn together. We do everything together, and it's always around food."

Donations are accepted by Edmonton's Food Bank all year.