An article on the front page of last week’s Sounder may have initiated the same conversation between your friends and families as it did mine: what makes a healthy community. It was from an unlikely source; a vandalism report by Cpl. Carl Vinet, but the point he made clearly was that we are all responsible to ensure that our island is a safe community for all its residents. But that is just the beginning of what it takes.

Turn the paper over and in the same issue, there was an article about World Food Day on October 16^th, and the events happening over the week on Gabriola to recognize it; from the Empty Bowl Project on display at Artworks; to a major food drive organized by the grade 7 students; to the events taking place at the Gabriola Commons organized by the P.H.C., focusing on not just world hunger, but the needs of those on this island who might need help from time-to-time so that they can remain and be part of the Gabriola community.

Last year at this time, I wrote an article called “Stone Soup.” By coincidence, —or perhaps not— the PHC began referring to its soup contribution for the Saturday, October 15^th Hot soup event, as Stone Soup.

Don’t worry; this doesn’t mean that you might actually find a rock at the bottom of your bowl. It was in reference to the moral of a classic children’s story. I thought it would be appropriate to re-run the article, with a few modifications…I am leaving out the nasty bits about my sister’s cooking. I didn’t think that it would be a very charitable thing to discuss, in light of the point I was trying to make, and we all know that charity begins at home.

 I woke up last night in a cold sweat. Maybe it was just the brussel sprouts I had served for our Thanksgiving dinner that evening plaguing my sleep. Or could it be I was experiencing guilty remorse for being such an inhumane wastrel. Had I been rash the previous evening; an embarrassment to all conscientious homemakers in the world? Was it too late to retrieve the turkey carcass from the garbage?

Why hadn’t I stored it away in the freezer, stuffed into my favourite pasta pot so that it would be ready to simply add water and simmer? Were there thousands of hungry people in the world who would go hungry because I had so cavalierly thrown away the remains of last night’s dinner? At the very least, shouldn’t I have at least offered it to one of my guests in a doggy bag?

Fortunately for all, I knew it wouldn’t be wise to try and salvage the carcass at this late hour. That could definitely be construed as an inhumane act, if not even manslaughter.

And then I suddenly remembered that I had made soup from the ghost of Christmas dinner last year, and after hours of simmering, skimming, straining, and then adding a crisper-full of ingredients I thought: why not just use a broth cube, or for that matter, a stone. This, of course, in that middle-of-the-night world of racing imagination, made me think of Stone Soup.

Do any of you remember the story Stone Soup?  It was a story I read to my boys when they were young. There are many versions of this story; some quite cynical and others more optimistic. It goes something like this:

There were these two starving travellers (or soldiers, depending upon the version) who had not had anything to eat for days. They came upon a famine-starved (or war-torn) village, where the villagers were also suffering from hunger. When the travellers approached any door to ask for a small bite of food, the poor villagers turned them away, saying that they had no food to share. (In the cynical version, they are all just mean-spirited.)

And so, the travellers set up camp and in a pot over the fire, began to boil water. In view of some villagers, they placed several stones into the pot; let it simmer awhile, occasionally sipping it with an appreciative grunt. The curious villagers came forward one by one, and were told how good it tasted, although it perhaps could use just a little salt; a little potato; some carrot; some onion, etc. And one by one the villagers ran off and brought back a little something to add to the “soup.” Do you see where this is going?

By the end of the day, there was a marvellous tasting soup, enough to feed the whole village. And everyone went to sleep that night with a full stomach.

Moral of the story: If everyone in the village (or island) chips in what may seem an insignificant amount of food, time, or money, we can reach a critical mass, where enough soup can be made from even a stone to feed everyone. Keep that in mind the next time you catch yourself thinking that you don’t really have enough to give to the food bank... Every little bit helps; from fresh produce to tins of tuna….leave the stones in the driveway!

Keep this tale in mind, not just for the next week, but every time you wonder what a healthy community can accomplish. If you think of Gabriola Island as a great bowl of hearty, healthy minestrone soup, think what would happen if we slowly begin to lose the variety of people we have. We need the young families, the young adults, and the seniors. Without these people, and yes, even some of our more colourful residents, we would be nothing more than a somewhat more elegant but decidedly more insipid consommé.