Bulletin Board

Debra Dynes Family House is growing with the Trillium Grow Grant!

March 2026

Ray Eskritt, Executive Director of the Debra Dynes Family House

We all know that competition for grants is fierce, and that’s why everyone at Debra Dynes Family House was stunned when we received notice that we would be receiving the Trillium Grow Grant!  The Trillium Foundation will be granting DDFH $150,000 over the next 3 years to transform our Community Garden into an Urban Farm.

The timing is critical for our community. Memories of pandemic shut-downs still lingering at the surface of our minds, and the drums of war growing louder each day, we know that supply lines will be affected; the real question is when? Will oil prices affect the agricultural industry so much that our currently inflated grocery prices seem normal? Will shipping and transportation lanes shut down and prevent food from being distributed? Will climate change stunt crops and leave people scrambling to find sustainable food?

The only solution to global issues that one can’t control is to do what we can locally to protect our neighbours. To ensure that broken supply lines won’t starve us, that crops are sustainable, that a grocery chain’s greed won’t result in choices between rent and supper, we think the best answer is to grow a new generations’ Victory Garden.

Some of you may remember Victory Gardens as a critical food strategy that women used throughout Canada when war rations made feeding a family nearly impossible. Small gardens grew produce enough for each family to survive. Debra Dynes is taking that square foot philosophy and applying it at a neighbourhood scale.

Thanks to support from Just Food, we will be home to 28 raised metal beds. In cooperation with our Garden Master and our generous volunteers, over the first year we hope to: install automatic irrigation systems, add weigh scales to track our production, increase our compost yields, and host bilingual home growing workshops for those living in the community.  In year two, we hope to enclose the area to protect it from wild-life and vandalism, increase the production yields and be able to enhance food bank offerings with culturally appropriate foods and medicines grown locally. Year three should bring a year of solidifying our procedures and sharing our learning with the world.

There will always be challenges, globally and locally.  We will meet them where we are, and as a community we can ensure that no one ever goes hungry. Not while Debra Dynes is growing!