Retired priest, researcher to represent PWRDF at Canadian Foodgrains Bank

Canon Cathy Campbell, a retired priest and former academic researcher on food security issues, will be the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund’s (PWRDF) new representative on the board of Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB).

Campbell, who has been involved in food security work for more than 30 years, says she is “thrilled” to be serving PWRDF and the CFGB in this capacity, according to a PWRDF news release. PWRDF, the relief and development arm of the Anglican Church of Canada, has been a member of the CFGB, a Winnipeg-based ecumenical food relief and development agency, since 2007.

“These are two organizations whose work I appreciate a lot and in an area that I’ve worked in all my life: food security, food justice and food sovereignty,” she said. “I’m thrilled to be able to interface between health, the earth, agriculture, economics and politics in this role.”

Campbell was chosen from a list of nominees put forward by Anglican bishops across Canada. She first became involved with PWRDF while serving in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines in 1993 as a seminary intern from the Vancouver School of Theology.

Ordained in 1995, Campbell served as a parish priest in Vancouver before moving to Winnipeg in 2003 to become the incumbent at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, an important hub for community ministry that was struggling to maintain a building designed to house a mid-20th century congregation of 1,200.

Between 2003 and her retirement in 2016, Campbell spearheaded an upgrade of St. Matthew’s facilities. In 2014, in partnership with Grain of Wheat Church-Community,  St. Matthew’s completed a $7.5 million renovation that included repurposing the church’s space to create a worship centre, 26 units of affordable housing, a neighbourhood resource centre and a commercial kitchen.

Before her ordination, Campbell taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. She is the author of two books on faith and food: Faith as if Food Matters (written for Canadian Foodgrains Bank) and The Stations at the Banquet: Faith Foundations for Food Justice (Liturgical Press, 2003).

PWRDF has been a member of the CFGB since 2007. Campbell succeeds the Rev. Marian Lucas-Jefferies, of the diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and will join PWRDF executive director Will Postma as a member of the board.