Squirettes keep up tradition

The Mcgregor Squirettes of Mary have been hosting an annual community turkey dinner for 24 years and they refused to let the COVID-19 pandemic get in their way this year.

Instead of the traditional sitdown meal at the Mcgregor Columbian Club, the event morphed into an order-ahead, drive-up and takeout dinner.

Co-ordinator Laura Belanger said the event, offering a free meal of a complete turkey dinner with all the trimmings and dessert, sold out.

“This is probably our biggest year,” Belanger said. “We always make enough dinners for about 700. Anything that was extra we've donated to the (Downtown) Mission.

“You have to order the turkeys in advance. In the last 10 days, I'm going to say, the orders went up by about 40 people a day. We've gone over 700 and we had to run out and get (more) turkeys.

“So we had to cut it off. We hate doing that. It's the worst thing to do but we had to do it.”

About 30 volunteers began preparations Friday, Dec. 18 for the Sunday meal pickups.

For those folks who couldn't get out of their homes, the meal was brought to them.

“We want them to have a good Christmas dinner,” she said. “Anyone that called and want their meal delivered, we have three delivery drivers … going out to deliver locally too.”

But Belanger said it's been difficult not being able to share a meal together with the community.

“The whole point is to have everybody gather so that no one was alone,” Belanger said, choking up. “It's hard this year because the whole point is not to gather.

“So to make this dinner that tries to bring people together and make it so people don't come together is so counterintuitive that it hurts.”