I often see a remarkable woman on the streets late at night. Ellen rides a motorized wheelchair/scooter thing, and carries food for homeless people. She's been at it for years, and feeds hundreds of people each night. The other day the Vancouver Sun printed an article about Ellen. Here's the first part:
To Vancouver's street people, Ellen Shonsta is known simply as "mom".
The 61-year-old retired secretary spends nearly all day every day cooking food and delivering it to people on the city's downtown streets. Despite suffering from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that keeps her in a wheelchair most of the time, Shonsta still manages to make enough food and drink each day to feed as many as 700 people.
"On days like Thanksgiving, it can be a ton of cooking," she says from her Granville Street apartment, where she has five gallons of rice pudding and seven gallons of Chinese food simmering on a stove. "I am saddened by the need out there. It gets worse every year," she adds.
Shonsta says she typically spends seven hours a day working in her small kitchen. She receives help in the form of food and financial donations from churches in the city. Volunteer helpers also make sandwiches and stew and donate blankets and other items to Shonsta. (...)
At 7 p.m. each night, Shonsta and 10 volunteers pack up sandwiches, stew, Chinese food, hot tea, Kool-Aid, water, cookies, doughnuts, licorice and vitamins, and head out into the night to feed the hungry and the destitute.
Shonsta cruises in her motorized wheelchair along Davie, Denman, Robson and Granville Streets, bags of sandwiches dangling from the arms of the wheelchair. Her helpers pull the remaining food and drinks in a trailer attached to a mechanized scooter.
I'd link to the rest of the article, but it doesn't seem to be on the web anywhere. Well, no matter. Here are some other articles about Ellen:
Street Mom, youth join forces to help street kids - Vancouver Courier
A Good Mother - The Ubyssey
The Ubyssey article includes Ellen's phone number, just in case you feel like donating or helping out.
Posted on December 29, 2004 07:41 PM. Filed under: Vancouver.