By Andrew Macdonald
To those who only know him now as a high-powered Loblaw Halifax executive in his early 50s, Mark Boudreau seems to lead a charmed life.
I am guessing here, he likely has a six-digit salary as director of communications and marketing for the Loblaw Atlantic region — and having once won a Set for Life lottery prize that paid down his Governor’s Brook home mortgage — it may be difficult to reconcile such success with childhood in a single-family parent home and his mom’s reliance on food banks.
But Boudreau knows the difference. He contacted The Notebook to chat about his personal connections to food banks as a kid in St. Catharines, Ont.
Boudreau has been organizing publicity for the annual spring food bank drive at Atlantic Superstores and other Loblaw brands in Nova Scotia and the region.
“Happy to chat with you about this — and offer my personal experiences with food banks and insights as to why I champion this on a personal level,” he emailed The Notebook. “I would not be talking to other reporters about this angle as it is very personal and I would only trust you as a reporter for this story.”
Mark Boudreau is passionate about Loblaw’s support of food banks. The high-powered Loblaw Halifax exec as a kid relied on food banks, so his single-parent mother could put food on the table in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. (The Notebook photo).
I met with Boudreau at Loblaw regional HQ attached to the Joe Howe outlet, and at times during a 30-minute conversation, he welled up discussing the impact of little or no food in the family fridge, and going with his mother to food banks as a five-year-old. Those food bank visits in the Niagara region continued into his teen years.
The Loblaw food drive began earlier this week and runs to Easter weekend at all Loblaw stores across the country. Customers can donate money at the cash register or by leaving non-perishable items in boxes at the stores, or by picking up a $5 bag of food and place that in the food bins for the Feed Nova Scotia food drive.
Mark Boudreau is a Loblaw Halifax corporate employee. He is overseeing the grocer’s food drive in the Atlantic – a cause near and dear to his heart, as his single mother relied on food banks when he was a little kid growing up in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. (The Notebook photo).
Wherever a customer donates, that help remains in the local food bank.
“If you live in Nova Scotia, you know that is going to your area,” Boudreau says of the national food drive. “It does not leave the community.
“I am working with Feed Nova Scotia through the media and social media channels to help customers understand the need is so important. The rising cost of everything affects Feed Nova Scotia; the cost of heat, the cost of gas, everything is more expensive from an operational standpoint. When people donate with cash, they are really helping them out.
Loblaw Halifax executive Mark Boudreau has a personal reason to champion Loblaw’s support of food banks, such as Feed NS – Boudreau’s mom relied on food banks when he was a kid growing up in St. Catherine’s, Ontario (The Notebook).
“We are trying to really educate customers and the general public on the importance of food banks. Everyone knows food banks are important, but coming out of the pandemic, Feed Nova Scotia has seen a startling amount of food insecurity in the province.
“For us at Loblaw, it is important to give back to the community and that we are a good partner with Feed Nova Scotia. We collect donations from our customers. We pay for marketing and signage in the stores, and we do work individually with food banks across the country when there is a time of need. Mostly, we just mobilize our customers and colleagues.
“Whether you know it or not, everyone knows someone who uses a food bank. You may not see it, but when we talk to our colleagues, the people who work in our stores, when we ask them, what is the most important thing we do as a company, they always point to the food banks and Feed Nova Scotia.”
For Boudreau it is not just a company charity drive, he was there as a youngster with his mother, relying on food banks.
“It has always been a difficult thing to talk about, but as I am getting older I am realizing I am in a corporate position in Atlantic Canada for the biggest company in the country and the type of things I work on at a regional level and nationally are areas where we give back to the community,” he explains.
Mark Boudreau, left, and his husband, Dustin Ellsworth won a Set For Life Atlantic Lotto ticket for $675,000 in recent years. They paid off their mortgage. (Contributed).
“That involves working with women’s shelters, kids’ hospitals, with PC Children’s Charity, and also, most important for me, working with food banks,” he says.
“For me, it is not just another fundraiser. It is actually something I have a passion for because for me growing up, I sometimes had to get on a bus with my mother or walk to a food bank and walk around with my mother as she filled some boxes to bring home with food.”
I asked if he felt different as a child when his friends and their parents bought food at grocery stores, not the food bank like his mother did.
“That definitely was not what my friends were doing, and it was something that I was probably hiding. People probably did not know that the peanut butter and jam sandwich, and that juice drink that I brought to school were not bought at the grocery store, they were given to us by a food bank,” says Boudreau.
Mark Boudreau, an executive with the Halifax-regional offices of Loblaw with his mother, Liz Hammond. (Contributed).
“I have memories of going to friends’ houses for lunch after school and opening up the fridge and seeing a fridge full of food. I almost could not believe it. I remember going home one time, not being aware we were poor. I asked my mom, ‘Mom are we poor?’, and I just remember her crying, and not knowing how to respond to me.
“My mom always did the best she could. We were lucky to have family members or friends who helped us out, but there were times that were very tough and we had to go to food banks, and I went with my mother. Sometimes, when we had no food in the house, I would look forward to going with my mom to the food bank so we could get some food.”
He says that because he was a kid he did not know how difficult it must have been for his mother to rely on food banks to get by and put food on the table. He has a younger sister and younger brother, who now both live in Nova Scotia.
Loblaw Halifax executive Mark Boudreau in a news chat with The Notebook opened up about his family’s reliance on food banks when he was a kid in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. (The Notebook photo).
“Now, that I sit here where I am and I went to university, the years go by and I have had different jobs, that part of my life I have always compartmentalized, and I have taken a lot of pride in pulling myself out of poverty and trying to forget those moments in my life.
“For many years, I was ashamed of how I was brought up, and I kept those memories from other family members or friends because it was something that I was ashamed of,” he recalls.
“But as I get older, I realize that gave me a sense of compassion and understanding of others that I might not have had otherwise. I never had a sense of entitlement, I always worked hard for what I got. Now that I am older, sitting here with you today, I am leading an effort in our region for Feed Nova Scotia, and so that when I am chatting with the folks at Feed Nova Scotia, and they ask me why it is important, in my heart I understand why it is important, and because having that understanding and personal experience, it has helped me shape (my life),” he says.
“A lot of people where I work can see the passion I have for food banks, but do not understand what drives that passion. For me, I am going to try to raise as much money and as much food as I possibly can because I know that if through my help we raised $10 extra dollars and got one more meal on the table, that could have been my meal.”
Recalling his upbringing comes with a cost for Boudreau: “It is emotional. I have never said some of these memories out loud before.”
The food bank visits “were off and on for many years. As I got older, it was more difficult because I understood.”
While he does not want for anything these days, “it is never far from my mind, I am always very grateful for what I have.
Loblaw Halifax’s Mark Boudreau is organizing the grocer’s annual spring food bank drive for Feed NS. For Boudreau, it is a personal effort as his single mom relied on food banks when he would go to collect food as a kid in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. (Contributed).
“At Feed Nova Scotia, they say it is not a steep drop from having what you need to having nothing. There are people out there, including very successful people and successful families, who never thought the day would come that they would have to rely on a food bank.
“What it has given me is a sense of responsibility. I have a university degree, I have a job, I have worked for premiers, very senior members of government, and now I work for the biggest company in the country,” he says.
Loblaw grocery stores make it easy to donate to Feed NS, either by cash or debt at the cash register, dropping non-perishable food items in bins at the food stores, or by buying an already bagged food gift worth $5. (The Notebook photo).
“It also helps me to bridge that gap that Loblaw cares about the community. We say that all the time. It is a corporate value to give back to the community. I think what I am really proud to do is to bring that to life on a very personal level and help prove that we care about the community. If I can champion that, that is like a gift.”
Boudreau has now lived in Halifax for 15 years, with the past 10 employed at Loblaw. In his 20s, he worked as a political staffer to the legendary politico Barbara McDougall, who was Foreign Affairs minister under Brian Mulroney in the late 1980s. He is a also trusted advisor to Premier Tim Houston.
Boudreau got a bursary to go to Carleton University and graduated with a political science degree. He says he would not have been able to pay for tuition if it was not for the bursary which was aimed at impoverished students.
Some Loblaw recommended non-perishable food donations, listed here. (The Notebook photo).
Within 48-hours after arriving in Ottawa, his MP hired him as a political aide, and he took a second job sharpening skates on Rideau Canal.
“Rick Perkins was my boss in Ottawa. If you are ever wondering where my allegiance is with Rick – he was my first (political) boss. He hired me”. Perkins is now the Tory MP for the NS South Shore.
“Then I moved from Ottawa and I worked at Queen’s Park for a few years (Ontario legislature) for a couple of ministers under the Harris government.
“It’s not something I have really talked about before (about the family reliance on food banks). But, I have known you for a lot of years and I trust you – so I appreciate you listening”, he says of his Notebook chat.
Editor’s Note: I was so moved by Mark Boudreau’s story, because for me happy childhood memories include going as a kid myself with my dear mom to Dominion & Sobey grocery stores in the 1970s. Listening to Boudreau’s own reflections this weekend I will donate some funds to Feed NS – most of The Notebook readership have many reasons to be grateful. You, too, can donate at Loblaw stores, or on the Feed NS website, click here to go to the food bank’s website where there is a donation button for Feed NS
Editor’s Note: For more coverage on Mark Boudreau’s mother, here is a 2020 Notebook story on her ultimate survival, having once taken refuge in women’s shelters, her story of the ultimate success – a happy read, click here.
