For Santa Claus Fund volunteer Don Ford, Christmas starts in September and sometimes means going without sleep

In late November, two days after his 60th birthday, Brampton resident Don Ford drove to a nearby church to meet a truck delivering more than 3,400 presents.

It’s a delivery that he looks forward to every year, even though the gifts are never for him. Ford is a volunteer with the Santa Claus Fund, a Toronto Star charity that distributes Christmas presents to underprivileged children. Every year, tens of thousands of holiday-themed boxes are distributed to 27 delivery depots scattered across the Greater Toronto Area, including a church basement in Brampton.

“Not many people get 3,400 gifts delivered to them on their birthday,” he joked.

The Brampton depot, which Ford oversees, receives the third largest delivery of gift boxes, each one stuffed with donated toys, winter clothes, books and other kid-friendly goodies.

Every September, when most people are barely thinking about Halloween, Ford is already planning for Christmas, organizing spreadsheets, co-ordinating with volunteers and making preparations for another busy Santa Claus Fund season.

“I go without some sleep,” he admitted. “But it gets me in the Christmas spirit, more so than anything else.”

The Santa Claus Fund holds a special place in his heart. Ford knows what it’s like to scrape by. He once worked in mining in Timmins and slept in the former office of an old mine operation. He relocated to “the big city” of Brampton to marry his wife. When he arrived, he had no job, was draining his savings and lived in a low-income townhouse complex.

Now he occasionally delivers Santa Claus Fund presents to that same townhouse complex. “Knowing that these (families) are going through some of the same challenges I had, but doing it with kids … that’s sobering,” Ford said.

The Brampton depot is one of the fund’s most challenging to co-ordinate because of sheer size. “One of the challenges with Brampton is that because we’re growing so fast, the maps get out of date,” he said. “Every year, we have streets that aren’t on any (hard copy) map.”

It typically takes about 200 hours to sort the presents and map out the delivery routes, tasks done by his team of about eight volunteers. Longtime volunteers have developed their favourite postal codes over the years — his wife likes to map out L6P, for example, whereas his daughter has a soft spot for L6R, which includes neighbourhoods with whimsical street names like “Sled Dog Road” and “Snowshoe Lane.”

“I call them the arctic streets,” Ford said.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, however, about 10 per cent of presents are brought back to the depot every year — perhaps because the recipient family has moved to a new address or the parents were reluctant to open their door to a stranger. Ford fondly refers to these straggler gifts as his “problem children.” But ever the committed guardian of the holiday spirit, he does everything within his power to ensure these problem children are united with their waiting households.

“Don’s dedication to the depot and the kids is out of this world,” said Stacey Carcao, executive director of the Star Charities. “He works hard to ensure every single box is delivered.”

For Ford, this sometimes means tracking down a family’s new address, which might be anywhere from Scarborough to Port Dover. Other times it means personally making a delivery late at night, or meeting a mother and her child at a Tim Hortons. This year, one of his volunteers managed to track down a family at a homeless shelter — their third in a year.

Ford’s two decades with the fund have taught him many things about his community. Out on the delivery trail, he’s face to face with Brampton’s growing diversity. Every winter, he encounters new accents at the door and sees new signs of widening inequality: low-income families renting the basements of multimillion-dollar homes, for example.

He admits he’s been brought close to tears at thresholds, catching glimpses into tiny apartments, sometimes with barely anything more than a mattress on the ground.

But one of his favourite parts comes after making the delivery, that moment after the door clicks shut behind him and he can already hear the kids inside, squealing and jumping up and down with excitement.

“I’ve had people in tears receiving the gifts because they’re so thankful,” he said. “You just see so many needs out there in the community and realize that for some of these people, this is the one light for them this holiday.”

If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell, please email santaclausfund@thestar.caJennifer Yang is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

GOAL: $1.5 million

TO DATE: $1,088,874

How to donate

With your gift, you can help provide holiday gift boxes that inspire hope and joy to 50,000 underprivileged children.

Online: To donate by Visa, Mastercard or Amex, use our secure form at thestar.com/santaclausfund

By cheque: Mail to The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund, One Yonge St., Toronto, ON M5E 1E6

By phone: Call 416-869-4847

To volunteer: scfvolunteer@thestar.ca

The Star does not authorize anyone to solicit on its behalf. Tax receipts will be issued.