The Crossing at Ghost River continues to prepare free meals for people in need

Despite a very challenging year, The Crossing at Ghost River has not been sitting idle.

The beautifully situated inn located 25 km northwest of Cochrane on Highway 40, has been in limbo for the better part of the last year due to COVID-19. Despite the interruption in business, they have stayed busy preparing meals and distributing them throughout the community.

General Manager, Jori Guetg says that helping the community during this trying time has been extremely important to them.

"Last year when COVID hit and hit hard in March we had to close the business," says Guetg. "As a team, we went and looked at what we could do for the community. We came up with a community grassroots outreach program. The Kitchen was here and sitting idle so they started preparing meals."

They began delivering freshly prepared free meals to people in need last April and they have continued to do so for close to a year now. Guetg says that they wanted to provide easy, homecooked, healthy meals for anyone who needed them. 

"The kitchen prepares all kinds of meals and then packages them up and freezes them and once a week we do deliveries," says Guetg. "Our thought was, how can we make it easy for people to actually get a warm and hot meal?"

They are currently preparing approximately 100 individual meals per week for distribution. The meals are then distributed to the Crossing's partners including Helping Hands of Cochrane and Area, Homes for Heroes and the Veterans Association Food Bank.

Guetg says that they will continue to prepare free meals for people in need as long as they are able to.

"We'll go for a little while longer until business picks up here and we've already talked about, we might not be able to provide as many meals once our business opens again and starts up but we certainly hope to keep going with it on a smaller scale."

The Crossing at Ghost River is now able to offer individual bookings with all COVID-19 health and safety protocols in place. They are offering a promotion for essential workers for the remainder of March, inclusive of meals and accommodation.