Cheer hampers to make a merrier Christmas for 3,100 children

By the time the doors close on Wednesday night, the chairwoman of the Thunder Bay Christmas Cheer fund said she expects they’ll make the holiday merrier for about 3,100 children.

For the past two days volunteers filled boxes full of food and toys and handed them out to pre-selected families to provide meals for a week and something for the children to wake up to under the tree on Christmas morning.

“Everything is going and we can tell by the quantity of food that’s disappearing and the toys that are disappearing that we’ve got a really, really positive turnout,” Kemp said.

“We’re happy about that. We’re sad that there are so many people who need to use our services, but at the same time we’re glad and happy that we’re able to do this.”



As it has for the past several decades the program has been in operation, the need in the community just continues to grow, Kemp said.
And the demographics are even starting to change, she added.

“It’s just getting larger and larger and larger as more families, who at one time were called the working poor (need our service),” Kemp said. “Now I think it’s the lower-middle class, where people are struggling. They have to make choices and there’s not enough money at the end of the day for toys.”

The rapidly increasing cost of groceries is just another added burden. Kemp said they usually add up the cost of a hamper of food, but didn’t bother this year because it was too depressing.

Luckily their main supplier of food has helped them stretch every last dollar, providing some food, including turkeys, at cost.

“When you start to think about how the cost of groceries has gone up, we’re excited that we can put in fresh carrots, apples and potatoes, because that really gives families the opportunity to be creative and do a lot,” Kemp said.

Christmas Cheer is at about $80,000 of its stated $129,000 fundraising target, money that will be used to purchase food for next year’s drive. The toys are provided through Thunder Bay firefighters’ annual Toys for Tots campaign.