When a Christmas miracle is 2 cans of tuna
SANTA FUND
If Christmas is a drug- addled mother of five in a festering apartment or a wideeyed boy hoping to make a holiday meal out of two cans of tuna, then Bob Murdoch is Santa Claus.
After 24 years delivering Christmas presents to people on the extreme edges of poverty, the tinsel has long lost its lustre for the executive director of Community Centre 55. “My Christmas has changed a lot since I’ve seen, I guess, the real urban world of what’s happening behind the scenes,” he says. “ It just hardens you after a while.”
Part charity, part city- funded agency, the Beaches- based centre is among 50 organizations in Greater Toronto that deliver gift boxes to families in need from the Star Santa Claus Fund. The century- old charity ensures that 45,000 needy children will receive Christmas gifts this year. Centre 55 also runs the Share-aChristmas program, which brings hampers of food and supplies to as many as 700 more families in east- end Toronto.
“ In the process of doing that, you see what the state of the community is,” Murdoch says. “ The volunteers get this Charles Dickens kind of experience most of the time. But the hard cases we do ourselves, because we don’t want the volunteers’ Christmas to be ruined.”
That approach may have come too late for one volunteer — Citytv’s Mark Dailey. One Christmas, Dailey came face to face with a runny- nosed boy in pyjamas.
“ The kid opens the door, looks in the box and sees two cans of tuna,” Murdoch recalls. “ He turns to his mother and says, ‘ Look mom, we’re going to have a Christmas. We’ve got two cans of tuna.’
“ Mark came back — he was a mess. He just couldn’t believe that that’s all it took to make this little kid’s Christmas.” Gene Domagala has been volunteering to deliver Santa Claus Fund boxes for the past 46 years. At 65, his fervour for the cause has hardly dimmed, but his labours haven’t gotten any easier.
“ Misery,” he says, “ is everywhere.”
“ It’s hopeful in one way and it’s kind of sad in another,” adds David Phillips, a Toronto police officer who has volunteered at the centre for 15 years. “ Because you know you’re going to go home to your own Christmas family.
“ A lot of the people that we help out, many of them are unable to leave their own residences. A lot of them are suffering with mental or physical disabilities. . . . The look on their faces when we show up — every single time, it’s worth it. It’s totally worth it.”
Sometimes, Santa’s front- line workers don’t even get to see those faces. From his office window, Murdoch would often spy a mother of five picking up her children from the neighbourhood public school.
“ She was so stoned she’d often forget them — or only pick up one and leave the other two behind,” Murdoch recalls. “ She was just in a raving insane mood all the time.
“ I think she had a major drug problem. And I mean major, capital M.” Murdoch tried to make contact with the woman, hoping to give her children a measure of Christmas. But the mother angrily rejected the offer.
“ So the kids were going to live in squalor and have nothing for Christmas,” Murdoch recalls. “ I said, ‘ You know what? I’m going to deliver it anyway.’ ” A sympathetic landlord, knowing the family’s situation, offered to let Murdoch and a volunteer inside her apartment while she was out.
“ It was a lot of stuff we had — because she had a big family,” he says. They slipped inside and left their cargo in poverty’s maw.
“ I monitored it for three days,” Murdoch says. “ And the stuff never came out. I don’t what she did with it, but I know she didn’t throw it out. So hopefully the kids got something out of this thing.”
This year, the Santa Claus Fund celebrates its 100th anniversary, aiming to raise $ 1.35 million for underprivileged children across Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering. If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund, or have a story to tell, email ccotron@thestar.ca or call 416-814- 2751.