The Walleye Magazine

Thunder Bay in Season

Giving Life To The Farm-ToTable Movement Online

By Lindsay Campbell For more information, visit tbayinseason.ca.

“We have this capacity to become sustainable and self-sufficient, and we have seen with the pandemic what can happen if we rely on food that’s trucked in.”

Thunder Bay and its surrounding area has become home to an eclectic mix of food producers and culinary minds. From DeBruin’s flavour-dense herbs to Thunder Oak Cheese Farm’s smoked gouda to Corbett Creek’s marbled, pastureraised beef, these are just a few of the places where local food gets its beginnings.

Raili Roy is a firm believer in the role that a regional food economy can have in strengthening a community. Roy, a farmer who also works for the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce and runs her own consulting business, has spent the last two years trying to give new life to the local farm-to-table movement online.

“We have this capacity to become sustainable and self-sufficient, and we have seen with the pandemic what can happen if we rely on food that’s trucked in,” Roy says. “A good start to lay the foundation is building bridges between consumers and key players in the local food system.”

The vehicle for doing this work has been Thunder Bay in Season, or TBay in Season for short. Those already familiar with the initiative have likely seen its designated website, which includes a guide to local producers, processors, retailers, and restaurants that champion what the region has to offer. Roy aims to elevate the presence of the local food scene on both Tbay in Season’s website and social media channels through multimedia content of recipes, food explainers,

and profiles of the sector’s movers and shakers.

The latest? A miniepisode with chef Rhonda Bill of A Fine Fit Catering, who teaches viewers how to make seared lake trout with hollandaise and roasted potato and arugula salad with spring greens and sheep’s feta. There’s also a short reel on buckwheat honey to understand how Barry Tabor of Bears’ Bees and Honey makes his product. And if you want to know what a CSA program is, Tbay in Season unpacks that too. Monthly recipes like pork tenderloin calvados, roasted carrots and quinoa with honey, cumin and tahini yogurt, or egg roll in a bowl are also available on both platforms. If it wasn’t clear already by the campaign’s name, you’ll find out along the way what’s in season.

The campaign itself is part of the Thunder Bay & Area Food Strategy. The Ontario Trillium Foundation helped start the Thunder Bay and Area Food Strategy eight years but now is partially funded by the City of Thunder Bay and surrounding municipalities.

Tbay in Season was launched in fall of 2020, according to Roy, after multiple brainstorming sessions with Karen Kerk, coordinator at the Thunder Bay and Area Food Strategy, and Annet Maurer, former manager of the Thunder Bay Country Market.

In part, the pandemic had exposed the greater need to strengthen ties between all parts of the food sector, Roy says. But months before food in grocery stores was scarce amid panic buying and botched global supply chains, the trio were thinking about what it would take to fill the longtime void of the Thunder Bay District Health Unit’s “Get Fresh Guide,” which was discontinued after 2017.

The campaign is still something in the making and even though Roy believes COVID has resulted in a lot of people thinking more about the importance of going local, she recognizes there’s a lot of work to do to make that choice easier. “I hope that what we’re doing is reminding people and helping associate local food with all the good things that are involved with it,” she says. “There are the people who produce it, how good it tastes, how fun it is to work with and how cool it is that our region provides us with this.”

In the future, she hopes to roll out more content to increase consumer engagement with the food scene. However, the dream, she says, would be to bring more communications professionals from the city to work with farmers and capture their stories. In her view, this would create many opportunities for people on the periphery of her world to get a firm grasp on where their food comes from and how it is made, and share their findings in a compelling way with a less familiar audience.

As Roy says, it’s building bridges throughout the sector that will strengthen a local food system, and she’s committed to continue her work until people see farmto-table the way she does.

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2022-05-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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