NEVER FORGET
Memories of kindness motivated Star founder to help kids celebrate Christmas,
What Canadian child wouldn’t yearn for a shiny pair of skates for Christmas?
It was no different for Toronto Star founder Joseph E. Atkinson, whose wish would inspire him to found a children’s charity.
Atkinson, who was born in 1865 near Newcastle, Ont., was just 6 months old when his father was tragically killed. His newly widowed mother struggled to raise, feed and clothe her eight small children.
But, as often is the case, it’s our struggles that shape us and forge our futures. And for Atkinson, a stranger’s kindness would provide the spark to create the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund to aid underprivileged children.
The seeds of the Santa Claus Fund took root one day while young Joseph watched children skating on a pond. A woman approached him and asked him why he wasn’t joining in. When she heard that his mother couldn’t afford to give him skates, the stranger bought him his first pair for Christmas.
It was truly the happiest Christmas Day of his childhood, and one he would never forget.
The years passed and Atkinson was now an adult who lived a more prosperous life as the publisher of the Toronto Daily Star. But Atkinson continued to pay it forward by helping many of Toronto’s poor and downtrodden. Notably, he used his newspaper to support a mix of humanitarian and social causes, such as the plight of impoverished children, and to push for the government to help the destitute — including the flood of newcomers to the city, many of whom lived in unsanitary and crowded housing.
In1906, while the country struggled through an economic depression, a young Methodist minister alerted Atkinson to the deprivation besetting 30 families in York Township. One hundred children faced the prospect of waking up to no presents on Christmas morning. Atkinson, most likely stirred by his own memories of growing up penniless, sprang into action.
This is when the Santa Claus Fund was born. That December, he appealed to readers to ensure that no child age 12 or under would be without a gift at Christmas.
The first year, $150 was raised and Santa’s sleigh was deployed — up to 300 children received gift boxes, packed at Trinity Anglican Church and delivered by horse-drawn sleighs to missions around Toronto. Tucked into the packages were warm woollen stockings, candies, nuts, raisins, biscuits, oranges, crack- ers, toys, games, dolls and squeaking toy animals.
The next year, 1907, the number of recipients increased almost fourfold to 1,150 and by 1912, 6,000 needy children found that Santa hadn’t forgotten them.
Through decades of change in Toronto, the not-for-profit independent charity has brought smiles to young faces.
The new millennium ushered in some changes. Until 2001, the Santa Fund was available to 40,000 Toronto children. But starting in 2002, the charity expanded its boundaries beyond Toronto to those living in Mississauga and Brampton. In 2004, it stretched its reach again to encom- pass families in Ajax and Pickering.
Now, 45,000 underprivileged children receive a boxed gift for the holiday season. The Star works closely with its sister newspapers, the Mississauga News, the Brampton Guardian and the Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, to turn fundraising into a community endeavour.
What goes into the bright boxes has changed over the years; but the basic concepts — and the gift of giving — endures.
Today, 45,000 gift boxes are filled with a balance of “comfort and joy”: a warm shirt, socks, mittens, hat, and toothbrush with toothpaste, along with a book, toy and candy.
The items reflect age, not gender, and the fund is inclusive of all faiths. Names of newborns to 12-year-olds are submitted to the Santa Fund by more than100 social and community service agencies and delivered to children’s homes by hundreds of volunteers, just as they were over a century ago.
Thanks to the generous donation of readers and through fundraising drives, the Santa Fund has grown from $150 raised in 1906 to a $1.7 million goal set this year.
All because young Joseph E. Atkinson never forgot a stranger’s kindness.