Our Programs & Services

The Mission started with one table and a few chairs, all dilapidated, and donated to us by a church. For the first few years, the whole community would fit around this one table. The friendships started at this table have continued to be part of our lives ever since. Since those early years, we have added ten more tables. They are now round.

Table fellowship has always been a key element of the life of St. John’s. Over the years, the focus has been on different meals at differing times of the day.

The breakfast program was started a number of years ago by Joanna, one of the members of our community, who noticed that people were on the street, cold and hungry in the early hours of the day.

The first years, we were open only during the winter season, part of the ‘Out of the Cold’ initiative of the city. Now we continue the breakfast program all through the year.

Breakfast is served Tuesday to Friday, starting at 5 a.m. At this time, it is the only place in the city where people who have spent the night outside can come in for warmth and food at these early hours. We can serve up to 120 people per day, and some wait outside as early as 4:30 a.m. to get inside. Many people who come at this time of day, are living in tents or on the street.

We have a social worker and trained staff, as well as volunteers, who are available to help with any issue that people may seek help with. That trust, built over the many years, allows us to reach out to people, who for the most part are outside of any social programs.

We are always looking for community volunteers. Those who help out always mention what a positive experience it has been for them to meet the people we serve. St. John the Compassionate Mission is associated with ‘Right to Food,’ as a ‘Good Food Organization.’

Work has always been understood as a basic human need, and not only an economic necessity. It is part of the ‘beautiful witness’ of the Mission to restore this sense of work as part of the art and poetry of what it means to be human.

St. John’s Bakery — In this sense, our value for work at the Mission is counter-cultural, and bread-making, as hard as it is, best suits this witness. St. John’s Bakery (153 Broadview Avenue, 416-850-7413) needs to keep a healthy balance between meeting its own expenses and its ‘social mandate’ to help and integrate marginalized people. The Bakery is always seeking ways to integrate its work into the life of the Mission as a whole, animated by the same spirit of humility and community as the Mission.

St. John’s Eco Market! — The grand opening of St. John’s Eco Market at 740 Queen St. East occurred on May 30th, 2025 with a blessing of water, after two years of searching for a new location. The community gathered with joy and gratefulness to witness this incredible space which has been transformed through the great efforts of many diligent, hard-working volunteers and artists from the community, to bring a new life to this space which is mere steps from St. John’s Mission.

St. John’s Eco Market, like St. John’s Bakery, shares a common understanding of the value of work as a basic human need. It combines many of the products produced at the Bakery with reconditioned elements of the previous Thrift Store, an artisan market, a gallery for local artists, coffee and a place one can sit and enjoy for a few moments this wonderful space. It strives to become a space targeting an increasingly environmentally conscious theme.

At St. John’s Eco Market the goal is to combine ecology and solidarity to counter today’s culture of waste and to help people in the process, this is eco-solidarity. Eco-solidarity means opposing the culture of discarding — both things and people — which increases inequality, exploits the planet and produces pollution, increasing poverty. Yet anything that is thrown away can become valuable in terms of eco-solidarity. Collect-Select-Recycle!

Come join us at St. John’s Eco Market and support a community dedicated to reducing waste and inequality.