Orange, nuts: that was Christmas
Joyce Sitarski has packed a lot into her 82 years. She raised three sons, taught elementary school, sang in the Mendelssohn Choir and founded Masterworks of Oakville, a classical music organization with a large choir and orchestra.
She has also travelled the world.
“You name the country and I’ve been there,” she said proudly, before naming a long list on all seven continents. Yes, she’s been to Antarctica.
It’s a life overflowing with vivid memories. Yet it’s a strikingly simple one that Sitarski especially treasures — the day she received a gift box from the Santa Claus Fund. She was 8.
“I’ve never forgotten it,” she said, choking back tears. “I was so grateful for what they had given me at the time in my life when I didn’t have anything.”
It was a year when her father, Jacob Hubenig, was seriously injured and off work. He was hit by a car while cycling to his tooland-die job. The meagre salary of Sitarski’s mother, a house cleaner, was all the family had left.
The Great Depression had forced the family off a Saskatchewan farm and into a home with an outhouse near Weston and Rogers Rds. The family struggled, but Sitarski and her two sisters enjoyed the riches of love. “We never realized we were poor until we were teenagers,” she said.
Every holiday season, Sitarski’s mother would hang stockings for her daughters. “Inside, my mother would put an orange and an apple and some nuts. And that was Christmas,” Sitarski said. “It was all we had.”
Christmas 1944 would be different. Sitarski believes it was likely the doctor treating her father’s injury who had something to do with what would become a lasting memory.
“It was such a big surprise,” she said, recalling the delivery by volunteers with the Santa Claus Fund. “To this day I remember the box — a plain cardboard box with a big colourful label.” Inside, Sitarski recalls a doll, mittens, a toque and candy.
She never had a doll, yet never played with the one she suddenly received. She’s not sure why. She wonders if it had something to do with her family being too proud to ask for help. She had no problem, however, wearing the toque and mitts, and making short work of the candy.
It was the first and last Santa Fund box she received. More than anything, it became a lifelong lesson: “To this day, I never forget when someone is kind to me.”
Sitarski has been donating to the Santa Claus Fund for years. “I’m older now and my life is beautiful, and I can afford to give to many charities,” she said. “And I’m especially pleased that the Santa Claus Fund is still helping kids.”
Every year, the Santa Claus Fund delivers gift boxes to 45,000 underprivileged children up to the age of 12 across Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering. Each box is stuffed with mitts, a warm sweater, socks, a toque, games, books, toys, cookies, a toothbrush and toothpaste. For many, it will be the only present they receive during the holiday season.
Sadly, the fund is struggling to meet its target this year. It will take more people like Sitarski to create those lasting memories.