I first met Wayne by phone. I was reviewing a few books on food politics and one was his No Nonsense Book Guide to World Food, which has since come out in a second edition. (You can read the review on Briarpatch’s site here).
As many who knew the man can attest, Wayne was gregariously helpful. Before I knew what was happening Wayne was interviewing me, peppering me with questions about my background in food. Over the course of our friendship, he invited me to several lunches and events, and to join the board of FoodShare. We first met in person at the launch of a government report aimed at addressing a phenomenon known as Healthy Immigrant Effect, which describes that, by and large, immigrants are healthier when they first arrive in Canada (Australia, USA) than they are five to ten years later. The jury is still out on the exact cause(s) of the phenomenon; nevertheless, Health Canada proposed that we address it by teaching, for example, Chinese people to eat raw vegetables, Muslims to eat hot dogs, Koreans to abandon heating and cooling notions of food, and Punjabis that plump is not beautiful. The Health Canada representative also detailed how immigrants needed to be taught to eat frozen and canned foods. And then to add insult to injury, we were informed that the primary ‘research’ was conducted not by interviewing new immigrants but rather their translators, refugee settlement workers and the like.
Well, it wasn’t long before there were cries of “Burn it!” from the mostly non-white faced audience. Instead of recognizing the culinary expertise that arrives on our shores with new Canadians each year, instead of developing strategies on how to capture and harvest that knowledge, to preserve it and incorporate it in the Canadian culinary history, the report writers simply assumed that the immigrants needed to be taught and that already settled Canadians were to do the teaching. I sat wide-eyed and tried to gauge Wayne’s views on whether he was on board with this report or like me astonished by its colossal confusion. I guess I sighed perceptibly a few times, and Wayne glanced over and smiled his wry smile and blinked at me as if to say, ‘Yes, this is a disaster. Don’t worry, we’ll fix it.” What Wayne did that day was a lesson in quiet and determined diplomacy. After the “breakout” sessions to discuss the “findings”, Wayne, in his capacity as Toronto Food Policy Coordinator, summarized the meeting not by embarrassing the Health Canada speaker and the facilitator (truly they had managed the job themselves quite admirably), but by focusing on what the report ought to have said, by highlighting the terrific ideas that various groups had proposed. His quiet demeanour succeeded in diffusing the situation without conceding a thing, without agreeing to a bit of nonsense, while making it crystal clear that the report was utter nonsense. I was intrigued.
Wayne and I didn’t always agree about the strategies but we seldom differed on the goals. The last time I saw Wayne, we were marching together down Bay Street at the 2019 Climate Strike March. His body did seem frail and I noticed Lori looking over, watching him, but his spirit, his life force, his prana seemed as strong as ever. RIP Dr. Wayne Roberts. Long may you run.