Story and photos by Mary P. Brooke    |         December 23, 2009

Bags bulging with food were sorted by over 40 volunteers at the annual Sooke Christmas Bureau family food program event organized by the Sooke Food Bank. Sorting non-perishables that were brought in by the truck load, and merging those with produce and ultimately a turkey or ham, the volunteers created Christmas season hampers for 415 families who had registered for the food vouchers through various social service agencies in the area.

In the basement of the Sooke Community Hall is where the sorting action took place on Tuesday morning, December 22. As many as 800 bags of food and some cash donations had been collected from Sooke area residents the previous weekend by the Sooke, East Sooke and Otter Point fire departments in decorated trucks, with the collections relocated to the community hall thereafter.

"We're surprised at the level of volunteers," said Dave Bennett who was on hand to help. "But it's nice to have a surplus. The amount of food is overwhelming. This community seems to answer the call."

"It's sad that we even have to provide this service, but wonderful that we do, because it's needed," said Hugh Mills who has been helping with this annual holiday season effort for about 17 years. "There sure are some good people in Sooke. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else," said Mills, in a mood of thoughtfulness and gratitude.

Mills will be the one who hands out a turkey or ham for each family as they come by in their vehicles to the back door of the community hall with their registered voucher on December 23. Home Hardware has donated 400+ plastic bags for safe (non-drip) transport of the turkeys and hams to homes around Sooke and region.

A nice surprise is in store for the children. The Sooke Lionesses have been organizing a toy room for weeks. An astonishingly abundant and lovingly-organized display of toys, books and other items for children and families awaits these families in another room of the hall's basement. Each child will receive a new toy and then can choose a few favourites from the ample display, to take home.

"We're pleased at the level of donation this year. People realize the need -- there's been a lot more promotion done this year, particularly by the Mustard Seed (in Victoria) and Food Banks Canada. But Sooke in particular is a very generous community," says Barry Gifford, a former navy man, who is the driving force behind the Sooke Food Bank and this annual Christmas dinner-supply effort. Gifford listed Western Foods and Village Food Markets as providing the cases of food (including margarine, apples, oranges and onions) that were wheeled in as volunteers were sorting the volume of food from the fire department's net, and highlighted that the Cool FM radio station, on site at Thrifty Foods in recent weeks, generated $13,000 in cash that was split among the various Food Banks in the Greater Victoria area.

Gifford, who is vice-chair of the Sooke Christmas Bureau, is also president of the Sooke Food Bank which operates Thursday mornings from a corner of the Sooke Community Hall. He has lived in Sooke since 1983. 

As the vouchers for the December 23 food pickup are organized through local service agencies such as Sooke Crisis & Referral Centre, WorkLink, CASA, and the Food Bank, it is known how many individuals are in each family. In fact, individuals are also referred to as families. The food hampers were assembled under categories A, B, C, D and E -- with A being one person, B being a family of two (parent and child, or a couple), and C, D, and E being increasingly larger families (in terms of number or need). There are 311 frozen turkeys to be distributed to the larger families, with smaller recipient families receiving hams.

Some volunteers who were as young as 12, had a bit of an eyeopener as to the volume of food and magnitude of effort that it takes to support families in need. Highschool students on hand were keen to take part. Some older volunteers had seen this undertaking many times before and were on hand to pitch in again this year. Gillian Hurwood, district commissioner for Girl Guides of Canada, brought in six of her 10 Pathfinders to help out.

The only apparent downside of the event seemed to be the unavoidable imbalance of supply -- this year there seemed to be ample potatoes, while the number of cans of cranberry sauce didn't quite reach the mark -- none of which was significant enough to warrant worry. Specialized attention by the volunteers to include a reasonable range of foods into each hamper was where the toughest work really occurred. Muscle and might was of course appreciated from those who relocated the finished hampers to a storage location, awaiting the next morning's release of charitable fare.  MM 

Click here to read Holiday Greetings from Sooke business and community leaders.