GUYSBOROUGH — After 20 years serving countless local people and families with helpings of groceries and compassion, Myles and Elizabeth Connolly – the near-legendary managers of the Guysborough and Area Food Bank – are stepping back from the table. Not yet. But soon.
“It’s time,” said Elizabeth, the administrative heart of the operation since 2005, now working to recruit their replacements by the end of the year. “Our age is getting us now. We’re getting up there.”
Together, Myles (78) and Elizabeth (74) have overseen everything from grocery buying and client intake to volunteer coordination and shelf restocking. “We’re feeding people of our communities,” she said simply. “That’s our mandate: to provide food for people in need.”
It hasn’t always come easy.
The food bank became a registered non-profit in 2005, but its earliest operations took place in a church furnace room with makeshift cupboards. Founding member Kay Williams, who returned last year to attend the food bank’s accreditation celebration, told The Journal she vividly remembered those early days. “We were in the furnace room of the glebe of the Catholic church,” she said. “Eventually, we had refrigeration.”
A former public health nurse, Williams said she often left patients’ homes to buy them food out of her own pocket. “That was the reason having a food bank was in my heart.”
Her example still resonates. “It was through Kay’s dedication that we have the volunteers we have,” Elizabeth said recently. “Some of us worked with her from the very beginning and learned so much from her about the respect and dignity each client who enters the food bank deserves.”
In 2024, the food bank achieved the standard of excellence designation from Food Banks Canada. The national organization describes the accreditation as recognition for food banks that meet the highest standards of “safety, consistency and care.” That, too, was no cakewalk.
“We had to do policies for governance and administration, people management, financial and legal, client service and care, public engagement and fundraising, and food operation and food safety,” Connolly says. “It was an ordeal.”
Still, the results speak for themselves. Located at 10 Green St., the food bank now serves as crucial a role as it did in the early days – maybe more. “The need is certainly there,” Connolly said. “You’re hearing some pretty sad stories of some people that come looking for help. [But] we can honestly say that nobody gets turned away ... We are operating at our peak. It’s because of the volunteers that we are able to function like this.”
Thursdays are busiest. Sometimes it’s 24 people. Sometimes it’s 41. “We don’t know from week to week how many are going to come.”
Christmas is chaos. “We’re giving out orders that we don’t give out all year,” she said. “You have to be prepared because you don’t know the numbers.”
Meanwhile the phone rings all week. New clients often simply show up at the door. “You never know from day to day what you’re going to deal with,” she said.
And yet, “We’ve never been without food,” she said. “If somebody called me today and said, ‘We need an order,’ the food is there. We’re always well stocked. Plenty of food for everyone.”
As they prepare to leave, the Connollys are focused on the handoff. “We hope we would have somebody long before [the new year] that would see how we operate and be there with us as we move along,” she said. “We won’t leave until somebody is very comfortable in knowing what they’re doing.”
Contingency plans are already in place. “The food bank is a registered non-profit society governed by a volunteer board of directors. “Myles is the chairperson, and I’m the administrative assistant,” she said. “[But] if something happened to Myles and he couldn’t be at the food bank, our vice-chair [would] take over and run it until we found somebody. And, the same with me – we have somebody that is trained who could come in and register the clients for us.”
The ideal successor? A strong back helps. “There’s a lot of heavy lifting,” she said. “Not from my position, but from [Myles’] position. I do all the paperwork. He does all the buying and the general operation of food.... He was in there this morning cleaning the washroom and wiping out the floor. There’s hardly a day that he’s not in there doing something.”
Confidential. Compassionate. Committed. “You just can’t take it on unless you’re really willing to serve the people,” she said. “Be kind to them.”
For Elizabeth, it’s always been personal. “Clients come in and how they’re treated – that matters. They’re treated with respect and dignity.”
And that, she trusts, will never change – no matter who comes to the table.
