Author: Rebecca Weigand
When I joined Karma Co-op in 2002, I didn’t really think of the twenty years ahead, or the thirty years behind me. What I remember from that time, what has always stuck out for me is the comfort of being part of a community where I know that everyone else shares my values of healthy sustainable food and community. Doing cash as member labour, back when we had to flip through the boxes of yellow membership cards, I remember the little thrill I felt (especially as a rather shy person who wouldn’t normally go up to other shoppers) when I’d meet someone new, or have a chance to welcome a new member, or join in someone’s excitement about a great product or the first strawberries of the season. I remember sometimes wondering about other people’s stories, about what drew them in to the co-op and what kept them here. I remember noticing the Karma kids and their sense of freedom and community while they shopped with their parents, and wanting this same sense of community for my kids (or maybe wanting kids so that they could be part of a Karma community). Karma feels almost like a home that one can drift away from and come back to. I’ve done that recently, and on my latest return, I have joined the communications/Chronicle team, found a great opportunity to hear and share some of those stories, as we celebrate our fiftieth year. A couple of weeks ago I sat down with longtime Karma member and co-op advocate John Richmond. John has been passionate about the co-operative movement since he first joined a credit union as a young teenager. He later became a member of Agora Co-op in Vancouver. He helped establish West End Food Co-op and Sorauren Farmers’ Market Co-op in Toronto, and he is an active member of Otter Co-op. Here are some of the highlights of that conversation.
Rebecca: You’re involved with a lot of co-ops. Tell me more about that, and how Karma fits in.
John: I was starting to get really active in the local food movement and urban and suburban agriculture, which in those days was not on the radar at all. But it was happening. There were farmers who were doing this and the food co-ops were the places where you could buy the food that they made because no one no one else wanted to buy it. No one, no one was interested in buying local, buying BC food and buying food produced in the city — the way we had done it in the 1940s and 1950s. That culture had completely disappeared. But the food co-ops had kept it going. I found this very inspirational.
I moved to Ontario in the 1990s and I arrived in Toronto on Via and the next day I went into Karma and signed up. I was super impressed with Karma because it reminded me a lot of Agora (co-op in Vancouver). Karma has that vibe that Agora had. It’s like a little family, everybody very supportive. I’ve been a Karma member ever since. And I tried to do all my shopping at karma. And I became a board member and I was the treasurer at Karma for a while which was a great experience.
Rebecca: What has kept you involved with Karma over the years?
John: I was really impressed with Karma during COVID. And I know not everybody in Karma feels that way. But I thought everybody was really lovely at Karma during COVID. It was a very stressful time. I’m a healthcare social worker. And certainly working in the hospital was very unpleasant, had to deal with a lot of very angry people, I still do. But so when I go for my weekly shop at karma, everybody just seems so nice. And so understanding and including understanding of people who are anti vaxxers, people who didn’t believe in COVID, people whose mental health was not good, and who were very angry, and who were standing inside, standing outside in line, you know, to get into karma and arguing. People were nice to them nice to them in a way that I didn’t see anywhere else in society. And I just thought this, this is a microcosm of how the world could be–the way we treat each other at Karma. I’m a cyclist and had a bike accident, and I had a stroke. And while I was in hospital, I got a gift basket from Karma, and a card from the staff. And it was just like the absolute loveliest thing. It was just so nice. I’ll never forget that.
Rebecca: What else do you think is important for Karma members to think about in terms of co-ops?
John: Toronto used to have a lot of food co-ops in the 70s, and 80s. And by the 1990s, they were all gone. And there was a new one that opened in the 1990s, thanks to the Ontario government, which was called Stone soup. They went under as well. And so, you know, keeping a co-op going under neoliberalism, which is the system that we live under now, is very, very difficult. When you’re a place like Karma, and it’s just food and your margins are very low, it’s really tough. And I think it’s a real testimony to the strength of the community that Karma is still around. It’s pretty amazing…. That’s an untold story.