Firefighters from the St. Clements station helped Santa Claus with his shopping and wrapping this year with a toy drive during the Wellesley community’s annual Santa Claus parade.
The fire department’s Tabitha Siegfried says the group couldn’t be happier with the number of toys donated to the drive – four big tubs filled to the brim, with overflow toys carried in bags.
“As a department, we would like to send a huge ‘thank you’ to St. Clements and the people who donated,” she said. “We are so lucky to be part of a community that is so eager to help and donate, especially on such short notice.”
She didn’t have a chance to count the number of new, unwrapped toys that were collected while walking in last Saturday’s Santa Claus parade down Herrgott Road, but all of them are going to the Wilmot Family Resource Centre to become part of their Christmas hampers, distributed to local families. Siegfried says it was just a small thing the department wanted to do for such a supportive community.
“The community does so much for us throughout the year and supports us in so many ways, we wanted the opportunity to do something to give back to them,” she said. “It was also an opportunity for us to bring the community together.”
Staff at the Wilmot Family Resource Centre Food Bank in New Hamburg are busy in the days leading up to Christmas wrapping and distributing the collected toys for families to put under their trees this holiday season. The center provides services to Wilmot Township and the south end of Wellesley Township.
For more information, visit www.wilmotfamilyresourcecentre.ca.
