One mission, 111 years, 2.2 million gift boxes
It all began with Star reader who wrote a letter that ran on the front page in 1906
“Five children. Father was out of work for nearly a year. Has been working for some time now. All his money going to pay debts. Children have scarcely the necessities of life.”
“Mother has run away. Father alone with one little boy. They live in a single room. The child remains alone all day while father works.”
“Father buried yesterday. Three little children with delicate mother.”
“Father epileptic. Mother not strong. Two children, boy and a girl.”
These are portraits of just some of the 4,890 children from impoverished homes helped by the Star’s Santa Claus Fund in1909, three years after the newspaper launched its annual children’s Christmas charity.
Without the fund, “hundreds of children who, despite what church and other organizations are able to do, would not have the least little reminder of Christmas,” the Star noted in a December 1909 story.
Since then, more than 2.2 million gift boxes have been delivered to underprivileged children thanks to the generosity of Star readers.
As astounding as that number sounds, it doesn’t surprise Star charities and philanthropy director Barbara Mrozek.
“I’ve been at this for 17 years and I know the number of gift boxes we’ve filled since then — more than half a million,” she says, tapping her calculator to arrive at 585,000.
“When you think we have been doing this for more than a hundred years, it adds up.”
It all began with Star reader H. Long, who wrote a letter that appeared on the Star’s front page in December 1906, wondering how he might make Christmas “happier for the children in some really poor family.” Star publisher Joseph E. Atkinson responded that the Star “has been doing some investigating along this line.” And so it began.
The impact grew quickly in the early years, from 373 children helped in 1906 when Atkinson launched the fund, to almost 10,000 benefiting a decade later.
At first, the Star relied on local clergy to recommend children to the charity. But as donations grew, the newspaper began enlisting the help of social service agencies to identify families in need. Massey Hall donated its basement space for volunteers to assemble the growing number of gift boxes for distribution.
The dire economic conditions of the1930s rallied readers to the cause. They donated $31,850 more in the first four years of the Great Depression than in the last four years of the “booming”1920s, according to a February 1934 story. As a result, the number of children who received gift boxes rose to 16,000 in 1931 and, two years later, to 18,400.
By the late 1930s, between 20,000 and 25,000 gift boxes were being de- livered to children in need across the city by an ever-expanding network of volunteers.
During the Second World War, clergy urged parishioners from the pulpit to support the fund. And the Star published full pages of their supplications.
Just as there was a dip in children served during the First World War, fewer than 10,000 children a year were helped during the Second World War, with just 6,800 receiving gift boxes in 1943. Mrozek believes the drop was because social service agency staff was either enlisted overseas or busy supporting the war effort at home and didn’t have time to refer families in need to the charity.
But referrals bounced back after the war and during the 1950s and ’60s, between10,000 and 20,000 children woke up to a gift box every year.
By the 1970s, the fund regularly exceeded its goal and in the late 1980s more than 25,000 children were waking up every Christmas morning to gift boxes funded by Star readers.
As the Star noted in a 1978 story, thousands of groups, from choral singers to business titans to pensioners to children, had raised money to fill those boxes over the years. And an army of volunteers helped to deliver them.
The annual number of children receiving gift boxes continued to climb, and by 1995, when the Star extended its campaign into the pages of the city’s Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao Daily News, 32,500 kids were on the Santa Claus Fund list.
In 2000, the Star was raising more than $1million a year to bring Christmas cheer to 40,000 Toronto children.
Two years later, with Toronto’s high housing costs pushing low-income families into the suburbs, the Santa Claus Fund expanded into Mississauga and Brampton, adding an additional 4,000 gift boxes.
The fund partnered with the newspaper’s sister publications in the area — the Mississauga News and the Brampton Guardian — to get the word out and raise the necessary extra funds.
“They were able to help us promote the fact that this charity was available to families in need in their readership areas,” Mrozek said. “And also to help us with the fundraising side of things. Because if we were going to increase the number of boxes, we needed to increase the money to pay for the extra gifts.”
In 2004, the fund looked east to Pickering and Ajax and added another 1,000 boxes, “because we knew from a lot of our clients and agencies that families were moving to Dur- ham Region and that area was underserviced,” Mrozek said.
To identify children in need, the Santa Claus Fund partners with Toronto, Peel and Durham social services along with 130 community organizations.
All children in Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering aged 12 and younger whose parents receive Ontario Works (OW) or Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) benefits are eligible to receive a gift box. Recipients receive a warm shirt (toddlers get a fleecelined tracksuit while newborn infants get a five-piece set that includes onesies), a warm hat, warm gloves or mittens, socks, a toy, a book, cookies and dental hygiene items (aged 4 and up).
Agencies such as Toronto Public Health, the YMCA and the Toronto District School Board are responsible for helping to identify children in working poor families and inviting parents to apply by the Oct. 31 deadline.
Since 2004, the Santa Claus Fund has delivered gift boxes to 45,000 children every December.
And just as in 1906, every penny from reader donations goes into the gifts. The Star continues to cover all operational costs.
Mrozek figures at least half of the donors and volunteers who make it happen every year had a parent or grandparent who received a gift box or received one themselves.
“And here they are giving back, one way or the other, whether it’s through their time or their pocketbook,” she says.
“This charity brings people full circle,” Mrozek adds. “So many of them, once upon a time, may have received one of those two million boxes.”
Are you one of the more than two million people who have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell? Please email santaclausfund@thestar.ca.