You Did It Toronto – Another Guinness Record
Posted April 9, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Congratulations Toronto – you beat the world record.
In one day, you donated over 262,000 pounds of food to three food banks – and we’re not done counting yet.
You all had your own reasons for donating to the food bank Wednesday.
One woman, a high school teacher, “sees a lot of poverty and we see it in the streets, so you have to give.”
A cheque for $500 came from a dentist’s office, and a young boy emptied his piggy bank.
And others have their own reasons for using the donated food.
Robert Martin needs to provide for his daughter.
Mary Malory uses an east-end food bank at least four times a month. “I have less than $300 left over at the end of the month and that’s to provide for myself, my husband and my two children,” she notes.
Without it, “my family would probably go hungry, yes.”
Heather Urbanski is the manager of Social Support West Hill. She says the donations “keep us going. Our community is wonderful. They do donate, all our faith groups and schools. But without our food from the Daily Bread Food Bank, this would not exist. We couldn’t function.”
Breakfast Television has something of a history with the Guinness World Record book. You came out in droves to support a kick line that included the Rockettes and stretched for city blocks.
You trekked down to the Rogers Centre to bend, stretch, and reach for a Twister record.
And Wednesday, we asked you to make your way to the Real Canadian SuperStore at Don Mills and Eglinton, for a record-breaker that would help Toronto’s neediest.
The goal was simple enough: shattering the one-day record of most food donations, once held by Regina, Saskatchewan with 221,000 pounds. That total was set in 2006.
But knowing our loyal BT and Citytv viewers, we thought we could blow that amount out of the water with the 2008 Annual Spring Hope Food Drive.
Three local food banks will benefit from your generosity: Daily Bread, North York Harvest and Mississauga Foodpath.
And you didn’t disappoint – donations began arriving before Breakfast Television was even on the air at 6am.
“We get some really good deals” with cash promotions, enthuses Gail Nyberg of Daily Bread. “We buy wholesale and then we also have the guilt factor. ‘We are the food bank, you know, and we’ve bought nine skids of that. How many are you going to throw in?’ And the food producers are pretty good, and so we can make our dollars go a longer way.”
More than 1,000 apartment buildings, from Burlington to Whitby, collected donations. One apartment-dweller took an extra step. When canvassers came by Tuesday night, “they knocked at my door. My wife was taking a shower, but I was at work and she missed out.” So he came Wednesday with a bag of food.
The food banks still need your donations – the goal for the spring season is 500,000 pounds.
Baby formula is always needed. For a look at what to donate, click here.
All Time Food Records
The Guinness Book of World Records is filled with lots of famous marks regarding food – and some of them are even Canadian. In addition to the Regina record for collecting consumables, here are a few more you may not have known – or cared – about until now.
Biggest Omelette: 2.95 tonnes (6,510 lbs.) cooked up in Brockville in May 2002
Largest Slab of Fudge: 2.29 tonnes (5,050 lbs.) in Sudbury, May 24, 2007
Largest Sandwich: 2,467. kg (5,400 lbs.) in Roseville Michigan, March 17, 2005
Longest Line of Pizzas:
Largest Stir Fry: 1052 kg (2319 lbs. 4 oz.) in Klerksdorp, South Africa, in October 2005.
