Mastodawn

The Community Edition Sep 9, 2025

SERVING GOOD FOOD AND GOOD KARMA

Tiny Home Takeout, located at 56 Duke St. in Kitchener, has been serving the community since they opened four years ago.

“Father Toby, the head pastor [at St. Mary’s] he was thinking about ways in which we could support the community, especially during the pandemic,” Jie-Soo Park, program assistant at Tiny Home Takeout, said.

The restaurant works on a pay-what-you-can model to feed as many people as possible.

“We want everyone to be welcome, whether it’s the mayor or somebody who’s sleeping on the street, to feel like they can come and grab food,” Park said.

Originally the restaurant served pizzas, but a few years ago the menu switched to serving four different calzone varieties as well as a rotating flavour of the month. The stall also offers bites, smaller snacks that change every day.

“We started off by serving between 10 and 100 people a day, and now we’re up to 300 sometimes 400 people” said Fr. Toby Collins one of the founders of Tiny Home Takeout.

“[W]e want to eliminate the stigma behind accessing a great meal, and so even though we are really accessible to those who may not be able to afford take out or a restaurant quality meal, that doesn’t mean that that’s the only demographic we serve,” Park said.

Many of the ingredients used by Tiny Home Takeout are grown in their own garden located at Resurrection College.

“We also seek to build community through food, and we find that calmer environment and a respectful environment where people have just a delicious meal that they really appreciate day in and day out,” Collins said.

On Sept. 14, Tiny Home Takeout will be running their Hunger No More event at St. Mary Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows Roman Catholic Church at 56 Duke Street, Kitchener.

“We’re going to have lots of food vendors come in and offer small free samples of whatever they serve. And there will also be a Kid Zone, live entertainment and there is a massive silent auction that is always really interesting and a great way to contribute to the community,” Park said.

For those who are looking to get involved with Tiny Home Takeout, the restaurant takes donations on their site. They are also looking for volunteers in both their restaurant location and garden.

“It really is changing this part of the downtown and when everybody pitches in and works together trying to deal with the issue of food insecurity in a new and creative way, it truly changes lives for the better,” Collins said.

“We want everyone from the community to be in line, and we always make enough food so that regardless of who you are, you can come by and you can grab dinner with your family,” he said.

More information can be found on their website as well as X, Instagram and Facebook at @TinyHomeTakeout.

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The Community Edition Jun 9, 2025

KITCHENER DEEMED BIRD-FRIENDLY CITY

In November 2024, Kitchener was certified as a bird-friendly city by Nature Canada.

A bird-friendly city is one that removes key threats to bird populations, restores nature to create habitat, engages in bird admiration and monitoring, organizes events to support birds, and has progressive municipal policies that help urban bird populations.

As bird populations have dropped significantly over the past few decades, it is more important than ever to take concrete steps to help bird populations thrive.

“Really, a bird friendly city is a community where key threats to birds are effectively mitigated, and our primary concern,” Jennifer Clary-Lemon, a co-chair of Bird-Friendly Kitchener, said.

“So, mitigating those threats can take a variety of forms, everywhere from restoring natural areas to, not using pesticides and rodenticides in your own backyard and a variety of other measures,” she said.

It is estimated that 2.7 million birds are killed each year due to agricultural chemicals. Another major threat to bird populations is outdoor cats that kill an estimated 2.4 billion birds every year, which is why another recommendation of Nature Canada is to keep cats inside.

“[We also do] things like public outreach about fatal collisions by window collisions and trying to communicate to folks what they can do if they just have that window in their house that keeps getting bird collisions and keeps killing birds. Billions of birds killed from window collisions, believe it or not,” Clary-Lemon said.

To become a bird-friendly city, a municipality is judged on how it meets certain criteria and is awarded points that contribute to its ranking. Currently, Kitchener is at the entry level.

“They have a low, medium and high entry level, all the way up to kind of advanced gold star level, so that every two years you would recertify, so we’re gearing up to recertify ourselves as bird-friendly next year,” Clary-Lemon said.

As May was Migratory Bird Month, Bird-Friendly Kitchener held several events to celebrate the city’s certification. For example, they have held talks on topics such as creating bird-safe windows and the effects of light pollution on birds. In addition, they have had screenings at the Kitchener Public Library of the documentary Lights Out Texas and an exhibition at Clay and Glass gallery.

#2024 #birdFriendly #BirdFriendlyKitchener #Birds #JenniferClaryLemon #kitchener #KitchenerPublicLibrary #KPL #lightsOutTexas #migratoryBirdMonth #natureCanada #november #RachaelMacIntosh