Columns
November 20, 2008 12:02 AM
Marney Beck
Despite the cold and snow, last Sunday’s Santa Claus Parade gave me a very warm feeling.
You might have seen us out there, staff members of The Liberal newspaper, marching along with our bright orange carrier bags, collecting food items along the parade route, and tossing them in a van proudly proclaiming that The Liberal has been serving this community since 1878.
We should have thought ahead, and put large words on both sides of the van “THANK YOU for helping to feed hungry families”.
But we had no idea how many parade spectators would remember to bring food items; no idea what an outpouring of generosity would greet us.
We gathered on Industrial Road, Liberal staffers Steve Somerville, Sonya Maaytah and husband Pablo, Alex LeClerc, Carrie Emerson, Sherry Day, Judy Coles-Hotchkiss and myself, with a variety of children in tow.
We were decked out in red Liberal sweatshirts and white gloves - ready to collect non-perishable food items for the Richmond Hill food bank.
But would people remember? Would there just be a dozen cans to show for our long walk?
I shouldn’t have stressed about it.
Residents proved they both read The Liberal and care about those without full cupboards in their community. The response was truly heartwarming.
We had only walked one block before at least one person started calling, “Over here!” or “I have food items”.
Some people pulled one or two cans out of baby strollers or knapsacks, others had difficulty picking up grocery bags of donations to give us, they were so large and overflowing.
At first, it was easy for both children and adult collectors to place them in our slowly-moving Liberal van.
However, as the pile grew at the back of the van, the shorter children had difficulty putting their items in so they wouldn’t roll back onto the road (which several did).
So, we had to push the small piles farther back into the van to make way for more cans of soup and boxes of cereal.
I was dimly aware there was Christmas music playing from our van to keep things festive.
At one point, when I carefully placed another large pile of food items inside, I realized the song playing was Feed The World, and it gave me a little shiver of synchronicity.
(Actually the song is Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid in 1984, but we all remember the chorus: “Feed the world; let them know it’s Christmas time again”).
That’s what we — you — were doing last Sunday during the fun, festive Santa Claus Parade.
You were feeding some less-fortunate people in our little corner of the world.
It’s for the dad who feels ashamed he can no longer do a full grocery shopping, because he’s lost his job.
It’s for the mom who feels guilty she can’t include expensive meat in tonight’s dinner and hopes her children don’t notice it’s macaroni and cheese again.
It’s for the student who pretends he ‘forgot’ his lunch, because there was no lunch to make before he went to school.
Or for the one who personally pains me, the young girl or boy who tells classmates they can’t come to a birthday party they’d dearly love to attend, because they have no money to buy a gift.
These are the people you are helping to feed, real life people just like this who live right in your neighbourhood, maybe even on your street.
With these hard economic times (call it restraint or recession or whatever ‘R’ word you want), there will be more families feeling the pinch.
We can’t pretend that one van-load of food will fill the shelves at the local food bank, but it will help.
When we ended our route at the Hillcrest Mall parade destination, we all had a good feeling we were part of a caring community — thanks to your generosity, some hungry tummies will be filled, at least for a while.
So, a heartfelt thank you from all of us at The Liberal.
If you forgot to bring your food items to the parade, or still want to do your part to “feed the world,” there are lots of grocery stores collecting your donations right up until the holidays.