Food Ministries

Feeding hearts and bellies is core to our identity as a caring community.

From community meals to growing vegetables to share to making sandwiches for the unhoused of our city, we are committed to these food ministries.

Growing produce for our neighbours

We partner with Urban Seedling and the West Island Mission to grow beautiful produce for our West Island neighbours experiencing food insecurity.

Urban Seedling plants the veggies, our volunteers (as part of our Vacation Creation Camp) water and care for the veggies, and teams from the West Island Mission come to harvest every few weeks.

Over the 2023 season, our vegetable garden offered up 6 harvests and the 2024 season appears to be on track to do the same!

A garden with various plants, including tomato plants with red tomatoes, cucumbers hanging, leafy greens, and flowers, enclosed in a small wire fence.

Supper Together

Community gathering in a large hall with people serving and eating food at a buffet.

Come as you are, pay as you can, help as you're able—and enjoy the simple pleasure of eating together in community.

4:30-6:00: "Community Happy Hour" with non-alcoholic drinks and snacks + the option of takeout if you can't stay
6:00: Gathering/gratitude moment before the meal
6:00-7:30: Supper. Together.

Interested in welcoming, cooking, shopping? Get in touch to let us know how you’d like to help: familiesandyouth@cedarparkunited.org.

Community Connections

A group of people, mostly seniors, preparing sandwiches together in a bright, spacious room with large windows. They are wearing hairnets, face masks, and gloves, working at tables with bread, cheese, and lunch meat.

Since December 2023, we’ve been gathering about once per month to eat lunch together, and then make sandwiches for people experiencing homelessness. We call this Community Connections and it’s as simple as it is meaningful:

We enjoy a light lunch together (everyone pays as they can) and then we turn our lunch tables into a sandwich-making line, making about 400 sandwiches that are then delivered to the good folks at Bread and Beyond. They, in turn, deliver the sandwiches to shelters for the homeless in downtown Montreal.

We’ve become known for the colourful “love notes” that our community creates to make each sandwich special. Anyone and everyone is welcome to decorate them and bring them to the church building (see template below, or make your own!)

Community Connections is for all ages and is a wonderful time and place for getting back to the essentials of building community and caring for those beyond our walls, too. Come give it a try!

Comfort Pantry

White pantry cabinet filled with canned goods, boxed food, and condiments, with handwritten pink signs on the wall above.

In response to the increasing difficult life situations that many are facing, we created a Comfort Pantry in the hallway near the Comfort Food Freezer.

Anyone is welcome to take from the shelves and anyone is welcome to fill the shelves.

Here's what we hope to keep the shelves stocked with:

  • Peanut butter/jam

  • Single-serving snacks (apple sauce, granola bars, juice boxes, crackers, etc.)

  • Pasta/sauce/canned tomatoes/rice/Kraft dinner

  • Breakfast cereal/shelf-stable milk

  • Cans of soup and crackers

  • Period products (pads, tampons, etc.)

You can access the Comfort Pantry on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9 to noon, and on Sundays from 9:15-10 AM and 11:15 AM to 12.

Comfort Food Freezer

Inside a freezer with various food containers and bags stored on shelves and door compartments.

You can find this freezer between the two sets of doors of the church building. It’s there for anyone who needs a meal or a muffin, for whatever reason, and to ensure that CPU can provide nutritious meals to a number of older members who live alone, and to families who could use some food support.

You can contribute clearly labelled and dated, home-cooked, frozen meals in portions for 1, or for a family. You can take a meal when you need one.

The freezer is accessible on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9AM to noon. and on Sundays from 9:30 to 10AM and after worship, from 11:15 to noon.