Regina’s food bank has won a national food drive contest for a second year in a row, collecting more donations than food banks in Halifax and Victoria.
The Regina & District Food Bank won the Great Canadian Food Fight by collecting 251.2 tonnes of non-perishable food items in a 48-hour period between Thursday and Saturday.
In second place was Halifax with about 78 tonnes, followed by Victoria with 68 tonnes, Regina food bank CEO Wayne Hellquist told CBC News.
“We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and we have a lot of experience at running a community-wide food drive. They’ll catch up to us over the years, though,” Hellquist said Sunday.
This weekend’s donations marked the most the Regina food bank has ever collected in a food drive, exceeding organizers’ goal of 250 tonnes.
Hellquist said the food bank’s shelves were pretty much bare two weeks ago.
“This will certainly position us very well for the winter,” he said.
“We’re quite excited, actually, about not only the quantity of food, but also the quality of food that we were able to bring in.”
Regina gets to keep its title as winner of the Great Canadian Food Fight, a friendly contest that takes place every year. The city’s food bank won last year’s challenge by raising 246 tonnes of non-perishable food items.
“We kind of blew them out of the water, but it’s a friendly competition,” Hellquist said.
“The really good news about it is we all raised more food than we did last year.”
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