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With its bright yellow and green doors and paintings of various fruits adorning the sides, downtown Charlottetown’s community fridge brought a pop of colour — and fresh, nutritious food — to the provincial capital’s downtown core.
The fridge first opened four and a half years ago to fanfare and political photo ops. Now, the parking lot of the Parkdale-Sherwood Lions Club is mostly quiet, and the fridge itself is nowhere to be seen.
“The idea really came about from hearing the needs of the community,” said Sandra Sunil, a co-ordinator of the community fridge.
“What we heard from folks is that they’re looking for affordable food, good quality food, cooked meals, warm meals and something that’s quick and easy and grab-and-go.”
The fridge served that purpose for a while, until Charlottetown council voted in 2024 to shut it down, citing a zoning issue.
Some residents also complained about garbage around the site, the clientele that visited the fridge and the amount of food they were taking.
Now, the site of the first-ever community fridge in the province is vacant, and the city hasn’t received any applications to replace it.
While there’s no movement yet, advocates say they want to see that gap in Charlottetown’s downtown core filled — and that there’s still a need for support and resources in the community for those experiencing food insecurity.
While the downtown Charlottetown fridge was the first of its kind on P.E.I., it wasn’t the last.
There are two other fridges in the city now: one off of Brackley Point Road and one in the West Royalty area.
Both of those fridges are supervised — a different model of operation than the now-shuttered downtown iteration.
But that’s not how Sunil wants to do things.
“It definitely doesn’t align with my values, with what the heart of the project is,” she said. “We wanted to make sure that it’s a resource and support where there’s no questions asked, there’s no barriers involved in … accessing the food.”
While Sunil’s concerns are about creating stigma around the fridge’s use, others say if supporting a vulnerable population means tracking who’s served.
“We don’t have any data on that because that’s not tracked by those programs,” said Jennifer Taylor, a professor in food and nutrition in the department of applied human sciences at UPEI.
“It’s very important to do that because how can you say your program is working? How can you say that you are helping if all those meals are going to a couple of people versus 25 people?”
Taylor said it’s also important to think about what kind of food people need, and whether people accessing a community fridge have the means to prepare or heat foods that are left in it.
There’s no community fridge in Charlottetown’s downtown, and advocates say that leaves a gap in the core of the capital city. While some say a fridge is still needed, there hasn’t been an application for one. CBC’s Tony Davis explains.
The P.E.I. Food Exchange used to cook meals to put in the downtown fridge. Its members are still cooking, but the food is going to the province’s Community Outreach Centre in Charlottetown now.
“It’s not the ideal scenario for us,” said Karen Murchison, who cooks with the group.
“We … felt really good about the work that we were doing with the community fridge because we knew and understood that it was going to a broader population of vulnerable people or people that were living with food insecurity.”
She said some of the people who used to use the community fridge can’t access the P.E.I. Food Exchange’s programming in the same way anymore now that it’s housed at the outreach centre.
“Ideally, I would like to see a number of community fridges — maybe at a smaller scale — located strategically throughout the city,” Murchison said, noting that there are some areas of the city with higher populations of seniors or young families that would benefit from having the service nearby.
“I just think that we have to be really open and creative about how we think about the community fridge because clearly the model that we had before does not achieve broad community acceptance,” she said.
Charlottetown council voted 7-1 against letting the P.E.I. Community Fridge stay on Valley Street after some residents in the area complained about loitering, littering, trespassing and property damage. CBC’s Tony Davis spoke to Sandra Sunil from the group that runs the fridge; Coun. John McAleer, who cast the lone vote to keep the fridge where it is; and Mayor Philip Brown about what comes next.
While the details of how a new community fridge in Charlottetown would work in practice are unclear, advocates agree that the demand exists.
“There’s a need, definitely, for access to good food and access to nutritious food. Whether that’s through community fridge or another type of resource, that’s up for discussion,” said Sunil, who said she hasn’t given up on the idea and is still having discussions about it regularly.
“The need is definitely still there in terms of the challenges families and individuals face in accessing food.”
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