Still haunted by Santa’s missed visit
SANTA FUND
It was hard to miss Margaret’s little apartment around Christmastime. She and her two sisters, all under 5, would be pressed against the front window, wide-eyed and waiting for their gifts.
Their parents had signed up for the Santa Claus Fund, and year after year, this immigrant family of five received a bundle of boxes for the children.
Except the Christmas of 1935. Of course, volunteers descended on Henderson Ave. to deliver the boxes. It was the Great Depression and the Little Italy neighbourhood was drenched in despair. Just about every family sopped up the charity.
“ They went to every house,” Margaret recalls. “ They did one trip, then they came back — ‘ Oh, now they’re going to come to us.’
“ They’re going to everybody’s house . . . and they miss ours.”
Instead, the entire family watched six boxes land at the door of a house across the street.
There were only three children in that home — all girls around the same age as Margaret and her siblings, with remarkably similar surnames.
Nearly 70 years later, Margaret still nurses a long-simmering theory. “ They got a double portion,” she says. “ They got their own. And ours. We all cried. We didn’t get anything at all.” And so the ghost of Christmas presents still haunts Margaret today. Mostly because Santa couldn’t have picked a worse time. The family, originally from Italy, was floundering. They were crammed into a one- bedroom apartment while their father sought work, to little avail.
“ It was really bad at that time. If you had an ethnic name, forget it. Nobody wanted to talk to you.”
Still, Margaret can hardly forget those doorstep deliveries that came but once a year from the Santa Claus Fund.
“ That was the only thing we had. We never had toys or a doll or anything. Not at that time.”
Established in 1906, the charity brings gift boxes of clothing, candy, toys and books, to children under 12 in struggling families across much of Greater Toronto. This year, 45,000 children will receive the boxes in time for Christmas. And Christmas won’t miss Margaret this time. Recently, her daughter came to live with her, bringing a 4- year- old granddaughter along, refugees from an abusive relationship and facing an uncertain future.
“She’s trying to get life on track,” Margaret explains. So she reached out for an old familiar lifeline. The Santa Claus Fund will bringing her granddaughter a gift this year. The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund aims 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, e-mail ccotron@thestar.ca or call 416-814- 2751.