Sixty years of impact
Built by neighbours.
On May 11, 1966, five small parish committees on the West Island agreed to do something simple together: pool their efforts, share what they had, and answer the door when a neighbour needed help.
That decision became the Fonds de dépannage du nord-ouest de Montréal, the organization we came to know as West Island Assistance Fund (WAIF) and know today as Fonds d’aide de l’Ouest-de-l’Île, or FDOI.
Sixty years later, that same idea still holds. We are still neighbours helping neighbours. We still believe nobody in our community should go hungry, feel forgotten, or face a hard week alone. And we still rely on the same fuel we started with: volunteers who show up, partners who care, and donors who choose to give.
What has changed is the size of the need, and the size of the response.
To the volunteers, the families, the donors, the partners, the staff, and the neighbours who kept knocking on our door over the past sixty years. Thank you.
These are the moments that shaped us over the past 60 years
Five committees become one
On May 11, 1966, five parish charity committees from across the West Island, the Dames de la Charité de Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, the Service social de Sainte-Geneviève et de l’Île-Bizard, the Service social de la paroisse Saint-David, the Comité de dépannage de Marie-de-la-Paix, and the Société de bienfaisance de Sainte-Suzanne, agreed to merge. They became the Fonds de dépannage du nord-ouest de Montréal. (We would later evolve into the Fonds d’aide de l’Ouest-de-l’Île, the name we go by today.) René Lusignan of Roxboro was elected first president. The first board meeting was held on June 27 of that year, with a starting grant of ten thousand dollars and a clear mandate: organize summer camps for children, deliver Christmas baskets, and help families pay for rent, heat, food, clothing and medicine.
From emergency aid to autonomy
Ten years in, the organization paused to ask itself a hard question: is emergency aid enough? The answer was no.
The Fonds d’aide began offering practical courses in cooking, sewing and household budgeting so that families could move from short-term help toward long-term independence. It is the first sign of what is now one of our core values: dignity through autonomy.
The Roxboro thrift opens
In December, the local CLSC offered a stockpile of second hand clothes and Sœur Marie Larose, then president, accepted. A small committee was formed under Suzanne Smadja, and the first vestiaire de Roxboro opened in the basement of CLSC at 9 rue du Centre-Commercial. It was the start of an idea that still funds our work today: turning gently used goods into food, support, and a fair price for families who need both.
A second home, and a hot meal
In February 1984, the Fonds moved into the chalet A-Ma-Baie at 9625 boulevard Gouin Ouest, courtesy of the City of Pierrefonds. That same year, the vestiaire de Sainte-Geneviève opened on rue Paiement.
In October 1985, Nérina Lafrance launched the Friendly Lunch Amical in the basement of Sainte-Suzanne church, a hot, complete and affordable meal for anyone who needed one. A simple promise that grew into our community kitchen.
We become owners
After the City of Pierrefonds offered to expand our chalet only if we paid for it, the board took a leap. With a mortgage from the Caisse populaire de Pierrefonds and a charter amendment from Quebec City, the Fonds bought 9 rue du Centre-Commercial in Roxboro for two hundred thousand dollars. The new building was inaugurated on December 10, 1986. Clients told us it was the cleanest, best-organized vestiaire they had ever seen. Two upper-floor offices were rented out to bring in steady income. The model worked.
A real organization
The idea for a food bank took root after Christmas 1986, following a surplus of Moisson Montréal donations from holiday food drives, and grew into what would become a permanent service.
In October 1989, the Fonds hired its first full-time executive director, Yvette Teofilovic. In 1990, Micheline Savoie led the organization onto computers. In 1991, the late Cardinal Léger donated a delivery van. The food bank, once seasonal, was now operating year-round.
By 1992, the vision had fully come to fruition with the purchase of the building at 21–23 rue Centre Commerciale, which became the official home of both the food bank and the bric-à-brac furniture store. That same year, the team was operating multiple sites as well as a school lunch program.
Coordinator for the West Island Christmas Baskets
By the early 2000s, the Fonds was the largest food assistance organization in the West Island, and a trusted partner across schools, churches, businesses and emergency services. In 2005, FDOI took on coordination of the regional Christmas Baskets program for the entire West Island territory.
The fire
On the morning of December 9, 2019, fire tore through our two-storey building at the corner of Centre-Commercial and 4th Avenue South. Between 60 and 100 firefighters fought the blaze. Our offices, our computers, the thrift shop and a large stockpile of donated holiday toys were all lost. The food bank, one block away, was spared. Nobody was injured. The community lost a building that day. It did not lose the FDOI.
Rebuilding through a pandemic
Within days of the fire, the West Island answered. Volunteers came forward. Donations of toys, money, food and clothing poured in. Christmas baskets went out on time. Then the pandemic hit, and our food assistance requests more than doubled. We adjusted, distanced, distributed, and kept going.
The lot left behind by the fire was transformed into the Garden of Hope, a space where fresh food, learning, and community continue to grow.
Getting ready for our next phase
On December 4, 2025, the FDOI announced that it had purchased a building in Pierrefonds-Roxboro. The former Canada Post Distribution Center. The vision: turn it into a real hub for the community, where food assistance, a community bistro, a collective kitchen, an expanded thrift shop, and multiple programs and organizations can finally live under one roof.
Sixty years strong
Today, the FDOI distributes an estimated two million dollars in goods and services each year, hands out more than 9,000 grocery baskets annually, and runs programs that go far beyond the food bank: hygiene item distribution, free or reduce cost clothing from the thrift shop, a community garden, a collective kitchen, school supply distribution, holiday baskets, social programs for women, seniors, new comers and so much more.
Sixty years in, we are still doing the same simple thing we set out to do in 1966. Helping our neighbours.
The need is growing. So are we.
Our food assistance requests have increased by 15 percent this past year. The fastest-growing groups are first-time users, single-parent families, children, and working adults who simply cannot keep up with the cost of food, rent and basics. We are already at full capacity. To respond, we have purchased a new building more than four times the size of our current space.
Our new home will let us serve more families through the food bank. Transform surplus food into nutritious meals. Welcome people for an affordable, dignified meal in our community restaurant. Expand the thrift shop. And bring more services and organizations together under one roof to create a new integrated community support hub for the West Island.
Our expansion into our new home is the most important project in our history. We need your help to finish it!
Sixty years was just the beginning. Help us build the next sixty.
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