“The recession has hit as far as we’re concerned,” says Sun Youth founder Sid Stevens. “We normally average about 200 families a month that we give food to. We’re adding 250 families to that list.” For the first time in 50 years the organization had to do a food drive during the summer just to keep up. “There’s banks in trouble, but you have to include food banks now too.”

Generations Foundation’s Adrian Bercovici concurs. “It’s an unusual kind of creeping poverty. I wouldn’t be surprised, in the next month or two, as things keep going downhill, if we get stockbrokers’ families asking for help.”

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NDG Liberal anointee Kathleen Weil is an expert’s expert – a self-confessed fan of policy wonks who insists she’s not one herself, thrice courted by senior officials before accepting her express ticket to the National Assembly and a virtually guaranteed cabinet post.

A walking encyclopedia of civic demographics after eight years at the head of the Foundation of Greater Montreal and three years publishing Vital Signs – an annual statistical analysis of each of the region’s neighbourhoods – her grasp of the city’s changing composition is clearly unrivaled, and no political novice ever brought to the table more compelling expertise in the intricacies of healthcare funding and social service delivery on the ground.

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Skopje is perhaps the most surprising city we’ve ever visited, possibly because we had no guidebook or recommendations from friends to depend on.

The kindness of the Macedonian people continued as our bus from Ohrid, which we had boarded with the help of the Dimoska family, stopped at a cafeteria. It was a welcome respite on this hot and stuffy four-hour trip. I was already regretting leaving the family in Orhid or at least in the town.

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