Don't call soup kitchen a 'Band-Aid,' says Romero House director. It's a 'tourniquet'

In a noisy, crowded dining room at Romero House in Saint John, Carl Sabean, 60, says he “feels all alone at times.”

Despite his outward cheerfulness, he’s drifted apart from family. He used to get by as a cleaner, but he said the work has dried up for now.

“I get myself all uptight and upset and stuff, and I don’t know where to go. Sometimes I work, but when I haven’t got a job, it’s hard to get by.”

Without the Saint John soup kitchen, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Sabean isn’t alone.

Before the rise of crystal meth, COVID, urban tent encampments and temporary shipping-container shelters, Romero House was there on Brunswick Drive, feeding people 365 days a year.

Unless something drastic changes, the soup kitchen — founded as a “temporary” measure during the recession of the early 1980s — will be needed for many years to come.

But with an escalating need and retirees making up most of their volunteer base, exactly who’s going to step up and keep things running is unclear.

Alfreda Hector, pictured getting ready to hand bagged lunches through the take-out window at Romero House, has been volunteering at the soup kitchen for 17 years. (Julia Wright/CBC)

When you’re feeding hundreds of the city’s most vulnerable people every day, it’s not exactly dining at the Ritz. As Sabean said, sometimes people “get hollering and fighting with other people.”

“I don’t like that. It bothers me,” he said.

When there’s a problem, Evelyn McNulty is often the first to step in. She’s been the executive director of Romero House for 30 years.

“They view me as an old lady and a mother figure,” she said. “Like, ‘Behave yourself.’ Generally, it works.”

Somebody gifted McNulty a t-shirt that says ‘Chaos Coordinator.’ She says that pretty much describes the job most days. She was brought up in the non-profit by her mother, Romero House founder Carolyn McNulty, and has been working at Romero House for 30 years. (Julia Wright/CBC)

Over three decades on Brunswick Street, she’s only ever called the police once.

Her philosophy is that “you need to overvalue those who are undervalued,” she said. “It needs to be as nice as it possibly can be, as friendly as it possibly can be, as caring as it possibly can be.”

She learned that from her mother, Caroyln McNulty.

“My mother — a little lady in a wheelchair — would say ‘Attention, I want your attention,’ and you could hear a pin drop in this building.”

After her mother died in 2016, Evelyn took the work over.

Out of nothing — a community 

Carolyn and her husband, Tom (Sunny) McNulty were of the time when people helped out their neighbours. They raised Evelyn and her six siblings on Sea Street on a shoestring budget, but that never stopped them from taking in emergency foster children, unwed mothers and others who’d fallen on hard times.

By the early 1980s, a lot of people were falling on hard times and the McNultys decided to do something to help.

Romero House founder Carolyn McNulty, pictured cooking hot dogs at 42 Water St., where the soup kitchen operated before constructing a permanent home on Brunswick Drive in the early 1990s. (Submitted by Evelyn McNulty )

Carolyn McNulty went from being a housewife to one of the Port City’s staunchest social activists.

She and other volunteers founded their first soup kitchen in 1982 on Union Street — nothing more than a cramped kitchen with a couple of picnic tables.

Carolyn McNulty and long-time volunteer Verna Drummond in the soup kitchen’s early days on Water Street. (Submitted by Evelyn McNulty )

Darlene Verner remembers those days.

“I started coming to Romero House 42 years ago when they opened in a little bottom place, that was just one long, big room on Union Street,” she said.

“I used to take my kids there. It was pretty hectic, squeezing in there in that tiny place. It would be full.”

Darlene Verner has used the soup kitchen since she was a young mother of three boys in the 1980s. Now, as a grandmother, she still relies on the service. (Julia Wright/CBC)

Later, Romero House moved to Water Street, and finally to Brunswick Drive in the early ’90s — to a building constructed with donated time and materials “like an old-fashioned barn raising” by the local labour unions, McNulty said.

Verner, who is now a grandmother of three, has relied on all three locations over the years.

“You feel welcome,” she said. “It’s like family here.”

Sabean feels the same way. The staff and volunteers are “very good people,” he said. “They don’t have to do that. They put themselves out every day.”

Inside the first soup kitchen location on Union Street. (Submitted by Evelyn McNulty)

McNulty describes her work as a “call of the heart.”

“You’re not rich and famous here,” she said. “This is the way I was raised, so it was a natural progression for me. But it takes a special commitment to run a place seven days a week, 365 days a year. If there’s a blizzard, I come to work. If this place called me at four in the morning. I’m coming.”

Romero House has never accepted funding from any level of government — a decision that liberates the non-profit from the ups and downs of party politics. But it’s also meant they’ve found themselves on the financial brink more than once.

Romero House tracks every meal they serve using a simple tally system. On the day CBC visited in late February, they served more than 480 meals between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Julia Wright/CBC)

So far, the people of Saint John have always come through, McNulty said.

“The community funds the place. The community runs the place, the community built the place, and we serve the community. I think that’s why we’re successful.”

They have four dedicated staff and about 100 volunteers, McNulty said, which shows the level of support from the community.

The majority of regular volunteers at Romero House are senior citizens. Most have been there between 15 and 30 years, McNulty said. While she’s 60 with no plans for retirement, the question of who will take over weighs on her mind. She calls herself an “optimist with pessimistic tendencies.”

Volunteers Charlene Good and Jim McQuoid serve up corn chowder, baked goods and snacks. (Julia Wright/CBC)

“My goal is to leave the building in the best possible way I can, so whoever comes after me will have good things to work with.”

But “where that person’s coming from? Really, honestly, I’ve no idea.”

McNulty, however, has faith. For the past four decades, whatever the soup kitchen has needed —  from a case of canned beans to money to keep the building open —  has had a way of showing up.

Fatema el Haj, a mother of eight who emigrated from Syria to Saint John in 2016, is one of the newer volunteers at the food bank, where she’s been making friends and learning a little bit of English. (Julia Wright/CBC)

“Believe whatever you want to believe, but somehow it always happens,” she said.

“Hopefully the person will just show themselves. But if not, I will be gone. And then it’s somebody else’s problem.”

The Founders of Romero House believed permanent programs and social support would eventually make institutions like theirs obsolete. Then along came an addiction crisis, pandemic, and other social changes that have altered communities across Canada. McNulty points to a large tent encampment on Waterloo Street, 400 meters away from Romero house, as an example.

“In my early days here, you would have one or two people who drank too much who would come in and cause a ruckus. That turned into drugs. The drugs in the city are an outrageous issue, really, which has just been snowballing, and snowballing, and snowballing.”

Romero House, pictured in September 2022 with handmade signs in the windows that read ‘one day at a time.’ (Julia Wright/CBC)

For years, she said people have been calling the soup kitchen a Band-Aid solution. “Now we’re a tourniquet,” she said.

She hopes other “temporary measures” — like shipping-container shelters, for example — won’t follow the same path.

“If we’re not going to repeat history,” she said, “let’s look for something better than a Band-Aid.”