Every Monday, and the first two Wednesdays of every month, from 7am to 9:30am.

On Mondays, we serve 3 styles of eggs, 3 kinds of meat, 2 kinds of pancakes, hash browns, fresh ground Kootenay Roasting Company coffee, hot chocolate, tea, 3 different fruits, yogurt, and lots of love. On Wednesdays, we serve two breakfast burritos consisting of (egg/salsa, refried beans, cheese/ham), yogurt, fruit, juice, and coffee.

We got our start back in 2018 when we started helping with dinners at Operation Street Angel, an organization that assists persons experiencing adversity. Find out more about them at the link below:

https://www.ktunaxa.org/who-we-are/operation-street-angel/

In 2019 we began serving a free Monday morning full-service breakfast in our church with a team of dedicated volunteers. On the menu we offer 3 styles of eggs, 3 kinds of meat, 2 kinds of pancakes, hash browns, fresh ground Kootenay Roasting Company coffee, hot chocolate, tea, 3 different fruits, yogurt, and lots of love. We had a list of 80 people of all ages that first year, including children who came for breakfast before school, and we served an average of 30 people each week. Because the Salvation Army Extreme Weather Shelter closed at 7am, we often had people coming in to warm up and eat breakfast quite early. We held a Perogy Dinner fundraiser for the breakfast program and that Christmas we passed out Christmas gifts of toques with headlamps on them.

Due to Covid social-distancing regulations in 2020, we began packing breakfast take-away bags. We received some grants to help us keep running – we have never missed a Monday morning breakfast since we started. We are most grateful for all the help we have received along the way: a Columbia Basin Trust grant of $3000 for food/supplies, a Teck grant of $2,500 for gift cards to give away, and a Teck grant of $6,500 to buy a 15’ X 30’ tent with propane heaters so that people can sit outside and eat while social distancing (we already had the picnic tables). We also received $400 for Superstore gift cards from the Homeless Relief Housing BC Program and received 288 lbs of wild meat from BC Conservation officers, which we used for the breakfasts and to give away to those in need. Our breakfast take-away bags contained our famous breakfast sandwiches, (2 eggs in a ring, heritage thick sliced bacon, cedar cheese all on a fresh Barb’s Bakery bun.) We expanded our scope to include delivery to many of our patrons, the homeless who were being housed in the Travel Lodge with financial support from BC Housing, as the shelters were closed because of Covid. Community Connections in Cranbrook (Who run the Travel Lodge homeless Shelter program) helped by funding the 35 breakfasts we delivered to the Travel Lodge every Monday and Wednesday morning (approx. 315 breakfast/mo.) by subsidizing the breakfast food costs by $700/month, and in August 2021 we received a CBT/City of Cranbrook Community Initiatives Grant for $12,000, half for food/supplies and half for gift cards to give away to our needy patrons. We continue to supply the travel Lodge with breakfast take-away bages today. In addition to every Monday morning, we now provide a breakfast on the first two Wednesdays of each month for our walk-in patrons. We change it up by serving two breakfast burritos consisting of (egg/salsa, refried beans, cheese/ham), yogurt, fruit, juice, and coffee.

Despite not getting another CBT/City grant in 2022 to cover our costs due to missing the deadline (oops!!), our small parish of St. Aidan provided the lion’s share of both the costs and the volunteers to run this program. Even when having to move locations we continued to provide breakfasts to the hotel and served walk-in breakfasts at the Christ Church Anglican, thanks to the dedication of our volunteers and the support of our parish. While temporarily at Christchurch Anglican – due to the ongoing major renovation and addition of an elevator and accessible bathroom at St. Aidan’s for those who experience mobility challenges (begun in May 2022 and completed in September 2023) – we gained a couple of new and very dedicated breakfast team members.

Part of our renovation at St. Aidan was to modernize and upgrade our kitchen so we could better serve our needy community. We added space in both the kitchen and the eating area and intend to purchase commercial-quality kitchen appliances. A space that used to be crowded with only 3 people in the kitchen worked perfectly with 10 during our grand reopening celebration.

We hope to expand our meal services in the future as there is a great need in the community for a safe, warm place to eat. Any financial help for this rather expensive and ambitious vision is very welcome. To donate funds to help with the St. Aidan Breakfast Program, please click below and make a note that it is for the breakfast program:

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