Two days after Christmas, the dining room was nearly full Wednesday at Loaves and Fishes in Sydney, N.S.
"On Christmas Eve, we saw 300 come through the door and we never saw that number before,” Loaves & Fishes general manager Marco Amati told CTV Atlantic.
Along with a record Christmas Eve crowd, the community kitchen and food bank also saw roughly double their usual numbers on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
"Christmas Day, we usually see about 50-60 people,” Amati said. “This year we saw 120. So that tells me there were 120 people who didn't have Christmas meals or anywhere to go."
It was a similar story just down the highway at the North Sydney Food Bank.
"We were open last Friday, we had 286 families come for food,” said food bank coordinator Lawrence Shebib.
North Sydney Food Bank volunteers also delivered Christmas hampers to 36 households, and they expect numbers will only go up in 2024.
"Yes I do, and we expect to see a lot more seniors than we've been seeing,” Shebib said.
The executive director of Feed Nova Scotia is looking even further ahead than the New Year, and is throwing down a challenge.
"I was hoping I was going to get a provincial goal underneath the Christmas tree,” said Nick Jennery. "To reduce the current level of food insecurity (in Nova Scotia), which is one of the highest in the country, to cut that in half by 2030."
Jennery said along with partner organizations, Feed Nova Scotia supported more than 21,000 people this Christmas, which is a 34 per cent increase over last year.
He said those numbers simply aren't sustainable.
"A number of organizations including our own will start to max out on our capacity to help, and then we're going to be in real trouble,” Jennery said.
