Annual "Spirit of Christmas Food Drive"
Great Success for 2004 

Submitted by Larry Fenske
CPC Brampton 
   

During the annual Brampton community Santa Claus parade, the members of CPC Brampton again collected food along the route.

The Parade is a night parade of 74 floats. The Progress float again was a Chuck Wagon theme, lit up of course with lots of lights— horses lit and wheels-a-turning in perfect sequence thanks to Kevin, Renate Thompson’s husband and club electrician.  The members start work on the float about a month before the parade.  It takes about 40 to 50 man hours of work to get it ship-shape.  The day of the parade the members, friends, and kids have a blast gathering the food .  We are a well oiled machine now.  We don’t miss a beat—even though we are part of the parade we never slow it down.  The music was entertaining us and the spectators and we all got in the Christmas Spirit.

This year we are proud to say we collected over 4,000 pounds of food.  Most of the total is collected during the parade.  We also collect money along the route from those who might have forgotten to bring food.  The amount this year was again doubled by the Club—total $600.00 was used to purchase additional things like baby food and formula. Rick Phillips, parade chair, took the cash and got the local Hy & Zels store to give us a discount stretching our dollars further.

All work and no play is not fun so as usual member Susan Clark hosted an after parade party.  It was a pleasure to have as our guests this year Juanita our National President, and Brian Roe from Toronto Downtown and his wife join us, along with Roy Urbach.  It’s a lot of work, but it is most enjoyable, and the results most gratifying. I hope that 2005 will be an even greater success than 2004.