Decades ago when the presence of area Food Banks were first being established to help people who were unable as a result of impoverishment through any one of a myriad of causes, to feed themselves adequately, I was happy to get into the habit of making purchases while doing my regular grocery shopping with the intention of placing them, in a neat grocery shopping bag into a receptacle that had been placed at the front of the store for that purpose. On the front of the receptacle was signage that identified the Ottawa Food Bank.

It had been pointed out that not only do individuals living well below the poverty line need assistance to be provided with nutritional food through the presence of food banks distributing non-perishable food items, but families with children as well. And the need didn't stop there; university students trying to eke out what funding they had to pursue a formal post-secondary academic education might find themselves as well incapable of providing themselves with all the food they needed during the course of a school year.

What appears to have altered over the years is that the need has, if anything, become greater. More individuals and families are depending on the additional food they are able to obtain from food banks than ever before. These are the working poor, and those living on welfare, presumably, as well as students doing their best to fend for themselves on a slender margin of income.

What also has changed is that the plastic bags once normally used by many supermarkets for their customers to carry out their goods now are no longer 'free'. A $.05 charge is levied for each bag. So it has become habitual for me to place a plastic bag obtained elsewhere than at the place where I shop for food, into one of the plastic bins that I use when shopping at the supermarket. And it is into that bag that I place tinned fish, chicken, beans, pasta, soup and other items that might help to provide someone in need with a portion of their daily nutritional needs.

By spending between ten and fifteen dollars a week to fill up and deposit food bags for those in need of additional assistance I'm able to fulfill some of my social obligations to others with whom I share the good things that we welcome yet take for granted living in an advanced Western society. But it is beyond explicable that in such a society there exist large unemployment statistics and people struggle to get by. The latest statistics released reveal that up to 800,000 Canadians now rely on assistance from food banks.