Volunteering brings families together
Parents pass down lessons of giving and gratitude by helping deliver gifts to children throughout GTA
Decades ago, in a squat brick building, on the eastern edge of Regent Park, a local businessman watched in wonder as volunteers methodically assembled a pile of Christmas gifts.
Richard Pearce had worked in the neighbourhood for years, in an office at 77 River St. that housed his publishing company. His daughter, Jan Gamble, said that even after he sold that business, he kept the space — and that year, he loaned it to the Toronto Star.
The operation that day was for the newspaper’s Santa Claus Fund, a more-than-century-old-effort to put Christmas presents into the hands of the city’s lowest income children, some of whom lived in social-housing heavy neighbourhoods such as Regent Park. Gamble said that struck a chord for Pearce — a man who loved Christmas and would shower his own children with gifts to delight them, but also witnessed Toronto’s stark inequalities firsthand.
“It was very rough back then,” Gamble said. “Just being there, he realized how necessary it was.”
The Santa Claus Fund was something shared by father and daughter who would donate time and money year after year. Pearce, ever careful in which charities he supported, was pleased that every dollar donated went directly toward the children’s gifts, with the newspaper itself covering all administrative and labour costs. Gamble became a regular face among the volunteers, ferrying packages into the arms of local families for so many years she lost track.
Nearly 10 years ago, weeks before Christmas, she got the news that her aging father had died. Despite the loss she trudged onward with that year’s deliveries — and still comes back year after year.
“I knew he’d want that,” she said. “Christmas was huge to my father.”
In her years as a volunteer, Gamble has noticed other families starting similar traditions, kids joining their parents in helping with the Santa Claus Fund. Erin Di Lella is among them, bringing her sons Cooper, 13, and Connor, 14, along since they were small to help her and her husband, David. It’s a tradition the boys cherish, with Connor noting they always go for a family dinner when they are finished.
Bringing a household’s younger generation into the fray wasn’t always easy. Di Lella remembers one day when the boys were younger, when they delivered presents to an apartment that didn’t have a scrap of furniture inside. “It’s then we had a conversation in the car,” she said.
Not knowing the family’s exact circumstances, she said they talked about all sorts of reasons why someone may be struggling — the cost of a home taking all they had, or the challenges facing newcomers, including those who couldn’t work here in the industries they’d trained for elsewhere. She remembers looking at her sons and seeing tears in one boy’s eyes.
It was a hard conversation, but one that she sees as important. “I think it instilled some really important values in the kids, how important it is to be able to give back to the community and make them aware that not everyone is as lucky as they are,” Di Lella said.
Over the years, it’s become a tradition the family looks forward to. They have a system: David drives the route, she plucks the right gift out of the back, and the boys hop out for the deliveries.
Connor hopes the annual effort lasts well beyond their teen years. “Hopefully when I’m older, and I have a family, we all do it together, and it becomes a tradition for us,” he said.