Let’s be clear about this - Howard Blakeney is a helpful guy, and he’s doing this because that's just who he is.
Blakeney is known around Stratford for his willingness to step in and help those who need it. It’s not about glorification, and it’s not about getting the warm and fuzzies in the pit of his stomach after doing a good deed.
This is how he was raised, and he’s staying true to that nature.
“I’ve been helping people for years, but I just decided I’d go public with it earlier this year to see if we can get more metal to buy more food,” he said. “It’s just snowballed ever since.”
Yeah, he’s that guy – the one you see in his minivan hauling around a trailer with ‘scrap metal for food’ emblazoned on the side of it. He circles the city for donations of scrap metal, which he then sells to help pay for food he turns around and donates. Messages come in via Facebook and he does what he can to stay within the city limits but there are times when he’ll venture past that if the haul is a good one. It’s a pretty simple process for him.
“I get a call, I go pick up the scrap, and when we’re full I haul it in,” he said. “After that, I go get the food. When there’s a sale, I stock up – we get everything from canned ham, tuna, salmon, and sometimes chicken. But we also get pasta and sauce, pork and beans, whatever we can get.”
There are times when he lucks out and gets fresh stuff like produce or steaks, and he turns that stuff around as quickly as he can. He’s refined his operation somewhat; recently he began taking in old bicycles. Sometimes they just go in the scrap trailer, but other times they get fixed up and given away (in some cases, he’ll charge $20 for one). But this all stemmed from his helping nature before blossoming into its latest iteration.
“I’ve been helping people in different ways since I was 15 years old, but for this idea I always knew there was lots of scrap out there and I could get a lot of money for it,” he said. “That meant I could help a lot of people. This year we kind of went wild and advertised what we were doing; it got so busy I had to pull all the ads down because I just got too much.”
In the three years Blakeney has been doing scrap runs to buy food, he estimates that it's close to 70 tons of food he’s purchased and donated. He’s got helpers who come and sort out what the latest haul includes, and then they figure out where the next shipment is off to. One thing he’s adamant about is he won’t deal with people who are outside the law or willingly abusing his generous nature.
“We identify who the (drug) dealers are and we refuse to give them food,” he said. “I’ve got a cancer patient who I help, and there has never been a case where I couldn’t help. There’ve been some I wish I hadn’t because I found out later they just thought I was a grocery store — we’re here to help the needy, not the greedy.”
There is never a down time, Blakeney said. It might settle down a little but the need is always there and he remains ready to go serve that need. Spring tends to be busiest, but with the summer heat beginning to fade away he’s sure things will ramp up again soon. Far too often, he sees people having to prioritize paying for heat over food.
“I see that a lot and it’s far too common,” he said. “I’ve been where some of these people are. My kids grew up on Franklin Drive and I grew up on Paulander Drive in Kitchener in the housing there. I worked my way out and was able to buy a house, so I know what it’s like.”
If Blakeney said it once he said it a few times: he’s not doing this for any other reason than this is who he is. Being generous and helpful is a quality he was raised with and he hopes will make a comeback.
“There are people in town who are doing good things and helping people,” he said. “Richard Kneider, the guy who does the big Christmas dinner, saw me one day and said, ‘keep doing it, you’re helping turn a lot of people around the other way’. It feels good when someone says something like that to you. I’ve been retired for two years and I wanted to go fishing when I retired. I still haven’t gone fishing yet because this keeps me busy.”
