How can I bootstrap models from express js into backbone at page load?

I have some data in a mongodb database and want to pass it to a backbone collection when I load the home page. One way of doing this would be to set up a node route like this:

exports.index = function(req, res){

  db.users.find(function(err, docs) {
    var docs_string = JSON.stringify(docs);
    res.send(docs_string);
  };
};

But this won't work because it won't render my jade template that pulls in the backbone code, it simply shows the JSON in plain text.

Alternatively, I could render my jade template passing in the data as a variable to jade:

exports.index = function(req, res){

  db.users.find(function(err, docs) {
    var docs_string = JSON.stringify(docs);
    res.render('index', {
      title: "Data",
      docs_string: docs_string
    })
  });
};

Then in the jade template, have a script like this to add the users to my user collection:

script
  var docs = !{docs_string};
  var users = new app.Users();
  _.each(docs, function(doc) {
      var user = new app.User(doc);
      users.add(user);
  })

But this seems wrong, since I don't really want to pass the data to the jade template, I want to pass it to a backbone collection. Also, with this solution I don't know how to then include an underscore template (on the backbone side of things) into the page rendered by jade on the server side.

What is the standard way of passing data from a node server to a backbone collection?