HELP US TO SPREAD A LITTLE JOY THIS SEASON
Your donation to the Star’s Santa Fund helps thousands of children in the Greater Toronto Area receive a gift,
Some people didn’t want to answer the door, and you couldn’t blame them. Nobody told them anything was coming, and an unexpected knock on the door in an apartment building — not the worst, but not the best, either — would be enough for anybody to wonder who the hell was there at 7:30 on a snowy Wednesday night. Some asked, “Who is it?” before opening the door. Most looked through the peephole to see, which is where I came in, because my kids are too short to be easily seen, even through a fisheye lens. It’s easy not to trust other people.
My kids would say, in their children’s voices, “The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund.” If that failed, I would just say, “A gift. For you.”
Every year, our kids deliver boxes for the Santa Claus Fund: the three eldest are in Scouts, and the Scouts make up some of the hundreds of volunteers who will deliver this year’s 45,000 boxes across the GTA. Imagine 45,000 boxes for a second, each the size of about three shoe boxes, covered with what looks like Christmas wrapping, stretching as far as you can see in one giant warehouse. It’s an immense undertaking.
Now imagine the people you give them to, like glowing dots across the city: cooking dinner, attending to those children, home on a Wednesday night, getting by. On the night we delivered our boxes this year, the snow was blowing and it was cold and we had three apartment buildings on our list. Again, not the worst, not the best, east side of town, near a highway. A one-bedroom goes for about $1,300 a month; it’s actually among the cheaper one-bedroom listings on local rental sites.
Some online reviews over the past few years talk about cockroaches; some mention bedbugs; some mention a severe lack of response from management on repairs. The lobbies are dressed up some. There are worse places.
If you’re in Toronto and you don’t have a lot of money to spare, it’s a place to live. This city is great, but it’s hard. If you haven’t bought a house yet, good luck: the price of detached homes have nearly doubled in the last 10 years; condos and townhouses have more than doubled. Rent’s only up about 30 per cent, but it is rising more steeply right now than it has in almost two decades. And people keep coming, from all over the world. The local population has been growing steadily since about 1980, and projections have the GTA at almost 10 million people by 2041.
And the defining story of this city continues to be growing inequality. I grew up in Vancouver, where the real estate gold rush happened earlier: you either got on the elevator or the elevator doors snapped shut, and everyone who didn’t get on the elevators had to watch them rise into a better place, forever. The result was and is a widening chasm between the people who don’t need help, and the people who do.
The Toronto Star has been trying to help those with less since 1906. It came from charity: Star founder Joe Atkinson was watching other children skate, as he often did, and a woman from his neighbourhood asked him why he didn’t join them. He couldn’t afford skates, he told her. So she bought him some for Christmas.
The boxes are simple: some warm clothing — winter mitts, toques and socks — and some fun stuff: toys, candy and a book. It’s a small thing, to many of us.
But to some people, it’s bigger, and it’s an unexpected kindness. The money for this comes from Star readers: the goal this year is $1.7 million, and we need help to get there. You can donate online.
It’s a great experience. This year we parked the car and my children and I walked through the snow from one neighbouring apartment to another. Some people were home, and some weren’t. One lady couldn’t see out the peephole because her Christmas wreath covered it; one door was opened by what looked like a 5-year-old. One young woman had a toddler around her knees, and a baby wailing in the background. She didn’t speak much English. And the common thread between them was the look on their face when they realized what was happening: that strangers were giving them a gift for their children. You know how people say a face lights up? That’s what it was like. It was human illumination. Kindness can do that. Empathy can do that. Caring about people you don’t know — remembering they are people — can do that. The Toronto Star does a lot of things that matter in this city, but the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund is one of the best.
I wrote about how we got our twins in a previous Santa Claus Fund column. They’re nine now. Malcolm’s toe hurt for some reason, but he limped on; Elliott, the younger brother, kept his shorter legs moving. And honest to God, Lena, our eldest girl, said as the wind whipped between the buildings, “We’re doing something good. That’s what keeps me going.” Her heart’s an ocean, that kid.
It’s easy to want to close the elevator doors behind you. There are entire philosophies designed around those ideas. It’s so easy to be mean these days. It’s better to be kind. Something else stuck with me. We were in an elevator headed down with two undelivered boxes, and a young man with a beard and a grey coat looked over my kids and me and he said, “Is it too late to donate? To that?”
It’s not. It’s great in this city and hard in this city, and there is a great power in the kindness of strangers. You illuminate people all over this city, people who could use it, when you donate. You make us better when you do.