About 20 years ago, four parishioners with St. Catherine’s Anglican Church in downtown Port Coquitlam organized a weekly soup kitchen to feed Tri-City residents with low incomes.
The four men — Paul Warwick, Ian Blue, Mike Tamburri and Bernie Poitras — named the outreach program Paul’s Place, in honour of Warwick who was a well-known chef in the area.
But their kitchen got a lot of blowback from city hall and the RCMP when it launched, Poitras recalled. “They said they didn’t want these ‘undesirables’ loitering around. We never got any support from them and, even today, only one mayor has ever come around to visit us.”
Three years later, after the church was demolished and moved into Trinity United Church on Prairie Avenue, Paul’s Place partnered with Share Family and Community Services to provide a lunch to residents who were collecting their groceries from the food bank on Wednesdays.
Since then, the program has grown from 20 people — when Paul’s Place was at the church on McAllister Avenue — to 120 residents, all grateful to get a nutritional meal in their bellies.
Poitras is the only one of the four co-founders to have served two decades at Paul’s Place (Warrick and Blue died several years ago) and, next month, he’ll also be saying goodbye.
“I’m too worn out. I’m old. I’m forgetful,” he said during today's (Wednesday) kitchen, which was run by the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation volunteers (it has the first and fourth Wednesdays).
Poitras, who also oversees about a dozen helpers on the St. Catherine’s days (the second, third and, if needed, fifth Wednesdays), said he’s willing to train an individual or a group to show the ropes: purchasing the groceries, making soup from scratch, setting up and taking down, organizing the volunteers, bringing in the perishables from Share — donated by local businesses — and feeding lunches to “people who just can’t make it through the month.”
Bidding farewell to the cause is a tough call for Poitras, who began when he was in his 60s.
Still, “it’s time to move on and let someone else do it,” he told The Tri-City News before carrying a tray with vegetable soup, Chinese fare and dessert out to the adjacent dining hall.
Tommy Tai, who supervises the Tzu Chi group that also includes Riverside secondary grad Hohims Tang, 21, said Poitras’ successor has big shoes to fill. “He’ll be hard to replace.”
Carol Tang, who translated for Tai, said their Taiwanese humanitarian group was happy Poitras was able to share his soup kitchen when they were looking for space 10 years ago.
Church warden Lei De Santis said Poitras is always “cheerful and with a ready smile.”
In 2014, he was recognized by the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster with the Order of the Diocese — an award given to parishioners for exceptional community service.
• Volunteers wanting to run Paul’s Place can call 604-941-2408 or email [email protected].
Carol Tang holds a thank you card for Bernie Poitras, which the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation volunteers presented to the Port Coquitlam resident today (Wednesday).
