Food in storage at The Sharing Place food bank in Orillia, Ont., in October. Demand for food banks has grown in Canada since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Food Banks Canada.Ian Willms/The Globe and Mail

Shannon Moneo is a writer living in Sooke, B.C.

When I posted a Facebook Marketplace ad to give away a seven-and-a-half-year-old double mattress, I never expected to get 14 replies within five hours from readers in Sooke, B.C., and the Greater Victoria Area. After 24 hours, I’d amassed 21 requests for an item visible in one photo.

Those replying seemed to form a microcosm of the current hardships in Canada. One woman was sleeping on a couch at a friend’s house; one man was sleeping in an RV; three inquirers were recent arrivals in Sooke from outside of Canada; one person was Indigenous, from a reserve.

It’s presumptuous to draw conclusions from sparse social-media comments, given that the truth may not be there or that even half-truths could be buried in the messages. But in the case of a free mattress, it’s pretty safe to say that people were not replying with the intention of reselling it and that their own need was driving the response. Even with the risks of bedbugs, lice, dead skin cells and stains, people were willing to take an item that had been slept on for about 2,100 days. (I guess we don’t hesitate to sleep on a much-used hotel-room bed – but at least there’s the guise of routine cleaning by staff.)

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