Stephen Vance, Staff
The volunteers operating the Riverside Community Centre on the 7th Line do more than host events, including their popular Sunday morning ‘Breakfasts at Riverside’: they also give back to their community.
During their final community breakfast of the season on Sunday, September 11, Riverside Hall volunteers presented two cheques in the amount of $2,000 each to the Golden Town Outreach & Food Bank, and the Residential Hospice of Grey Bruce. The funds largely came from the proceeds of their community breakfasts.
“We’re in our sixth year now,” Riverside Community Centre board chairman Allen Hughes told The Independent. “We started with a whopping 26 people (for the first breakfast), and we wondered if it was going to work,” he recalled with a laugh.
These days, the turnout is often in excess of 100 people, and on Mother’s Day of last year, the breakfast attracted more than 150 people.
Breakfasts at Riverside typically include breakfast staples like scrambled eggs, bacon, breakfast sausages, pancakes, toast, and hash browns, along with baked goods and fresh fruit all prepared by volunteer friends and neighbours and served cafeteria-style for just $10.
Hughes said that in addition to the funds raised by the monthly breakfasts, which run from April to September, the Riverside Community Centre has recently benefited from a new tenant – Meaford’s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion – which has injected some new funds into the volunteer board’s bank account.
Meaford Councillor Steven Bartley, who has been the council representative on the Riverside Community Centre board since he began his council term in 2014, says that the Riverside community is more like a family.
“It’s like a family. These people are just like family. It’s unbelievable the friendship that’s here,” said Bartley, who helps cook the breakfast each month along with the rest of the board.
Bartley also noted that the hard work of the volunteers has helped to make the facility sustainable.
“They’re a dedicated group,” Bartley said of the volunteers who operate the hall. “They put their noses to the grindstone, they’re profitable, we’ve now partnered with the Legion which makes this building pay for itself for the municipality of Meaford. No tax dollars should be going into this building next year.”
On hand to receive the cheques were Fionnuala Sparling of the Golden Town Outreach, and Scott Lovell from the Residential Hospice of Grey Bruce.
