SANTA FUND
How Toronto Star’s founding editor has helped make Christmas cheerier for needy kids since 1906,
There were pairs of stockings, peppermint walking sticks and oranges for the whole family.
And each of those six kids in one particular household in 1906 also got a special present courtesy of the Toronto Daily Star’s Santa Claus Fund.
For 11 year-old Grace, the eldest, there was a book and an undressed doll.
Her younger brothers Walter and Gordon received an air gun and soldier’s set.
Sisters Nellie and Evelyn each got a doll with a matching tea set.
And the youngest, 1-year-old Alice, received a celluloid rattle and “a squeaking animal.”
A front-page article in the Star on Christmas Eve said Grace and her brothers and sisters were among 350 of Toronto’s neediest children visited by the Star’s Santa that winter.
Readers donated $150 in the charity drive’s inaugural year — a considerable sum given that their weekday paper cost one cent.
This year, the children won’t find any oranges or air guns in their Star parcels. Instead, an 11-year-old boy or girl (since the boxes are gender-neutral) might expect to find a 300-piece horse puzzle, a crewneck shirt with a winter design, a matching toque and gloves, a book, socks, a bag of gummies, a toothbrush and toothpaste.
A1-year-old like Grace’s baby sister Alice would get a toy guitar that lights up and plays music and a twopiece track suit, among other goodies.
“There’s a lot of consideration that goes into every single item in the box,” said the Star’s Director of Charities and Philanthropy, Barb Mrozek. Although the contents of the Santa Claus Fund gift parcels have changed, its purpose has remained the same for 109 years: to make sure that no child under 13 is overlooked by Saint Nick.
The paper’s founding editor Joseph E. Atkinson started the annual charity drive as families were beginning to feel the pinch of a depression. A young priest working with British immigrants pleaded for help, saying 100 children in his district alone faced a Christmas without Santa Claus.
Atkinson was sympathetic because he knew from his own childhood what it was like to go without around the holidays.
When he was 7 months old, his father was hit by a train and killed, leaving his mother to care for him and his seven siblings.
One sad winter’s day in his childhood stuck with Atkinson for many years. He recalled watching the other kids skate on a pond and not being able to join in the fun because he didn’t own skates. Then a lady he didn’t know asked him why he wasn’t playing with the others.
On Christmas morning, she left a pair of skates at his home.
“He was to remember this as the happiest Christmas of his childhood,” his biographer and former Star editor Ross Harkness wrote.
Every fall and winter since, the paper’s pages have featured stories like this one from Atkinson’s youth — of Christmases made merrier by strangers’ generosity.
As the city has grown, so has the need.
The goal for this year’s drive is to raise $1.7 million so that 45,000 children in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Pickering and Ajax won’t go empty-handed on the holidays. If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell, please email santaclausfund@thestar.ca.