On Saturday, July 20, Granville Street was even busier than usual for a beautiful weekend day. Beyond signs that read “Will play hockey for food,” non-profit organization Five Hole For Food had set up shop between Robson and Smithe.
Five Hole For Food is a national, volunteer driven organization with a basic goal: to raise food for local food banks. Started by SFU MBA student Richard Loat, the team travelled across Canada from the East to the West, starting on July 3 in St. John’s and ending up in Vancouver, where they took over Granville Street from noon to 6:00 p.m. This was the team’s fourth tour.
The tour invited hockey lovers as well as those just looking to contribute to a good cause to come out and bring their hockey stick and a can of food. Over the past three years, Five Hole For Food has raised over 200,000 pounds of food to support local food banks. On this tour alone they raised over 345,000 pounds of food, blowing past their goal of 250,000 pounds. Vancouver’s contribution totalled over 70,000 pounds.
Nicole Van Zanten, Five Hole For Food’s director of digital and web, said that the energy in Vancouver was “amazing. Out in the maritimes it’s wonderful — a lot of small towns, a lot of small-knit communities — but here it’s big, and everybody comes down and social’s just been buzzing all day.”
Social media is imprinted in the identity of the organization, which has been able to reach far past its 40 volunteers to reach a huge Canadian audience. To date, the initiative has gained support from George Melville, the chairman and owner of Boston Pizza, Bif Naked, Dan Mangan, and even hockey legends Trevor Linden and Roberto Luongo.
“Trevor was a special one,” Loat said in an interview with the Richmond Review. “It’s an immense point of pride just because this has been my baby that I’ve grown year-over-year.”
The idea of Five Hole For Food was borne out of the 2010 Winter Olympics, after Canada’s gold medal hockey win and the infectious energy that came from the games made Loat realize that hockey could be used as a vehicle for change in Canada.
“We’re trying to build a social movement that is really tapping into the passion that Canadians have for the sport of hockey, and using that as a vehicle for social change, not just in our hometown of Vancouver, but across Canada,” Loat said in an interview with Burnaby Now.
For the first tour in 2010, the team set out across Canada to play nine games and travel 6,000 kilometers in just nine days, raising 6,000 pounds of food. This time around, Five Hole For Food drove 9,405 kilometers, and played 54 hours of hockey.
“For me, it’s about raising more and more every year,” Loat said, according to the Richmond Review. “Even if it’s just one pound of food more, it’s considered a success . . . The more impact we can leave on the community, the more impact we can make from year to year.”
