‘Our donors are very loyal’: Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund hits its goal of delivering 50,000 gift boxes to kids across the GTA

This season’s Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund has met its goal of delivering 50,000 cheerily wrapped gift boxes to underserved children across Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Ajax and Pickering.

“Thanks to our warehouse team and hundreds of volunteers (including many TorStar staff), we were able to distribute 50,000 gift boxes this year to financially vulnerable kids across the GTA,” Meghan Halverson, manager of The Star Charities, said in an email on Saturday.

Some donors gave more than once when they realized things were tough, Beth Galvez, coordinator of Toronto Star Children’s Charities, said.

“Our donors are very loyal,” she said.

A couple days after Christmas, the fundraising was $160,000 short of its $1.5 million goal but Halverson said yesterday that “we are edging towards our goal,” and that there are still donations coming through the mail.

Donations can be made year round and the fundraising campaign timeline typically runs from October to December.

Santa Fund drives date back to 1906, when almost 400 packages were delivered to the city’s downtown.

Back then, a Star reporter recorded the dialogue as a Christmas package was delivered to a small cottage near Little Trinity Anglican Church in Corktown.

The reporter from the Daily Star, as the Star was then known, noted that the package was received on Christmas Eve 1906 by a “poorly clad” woman with a troop of children peeping out from behind her skirt.

“Oh, thank you, thank you ever so much,” she said.

“Was that Santa Claus, mamma?,” one of the children hiding behind her skirt asked.

The paper was spurred to get into delivering Christmas smiles in part by a letter from reader H. Long, who said he would like to make Christmas happier for children. He asked if the Star might step in.

The Star’s long-time publisher Joseph E. Atkinson jumped in with both feet.

Days after Long’s letter was published, there was a front-page story in the Daily Star announcing “a Santa Claus fund.”

“The money will be spent in buying presents and filling Christmas stockings for a number of very poor children, whose names the Daily Star has secured,” the paper announced.

Atkinson didn’t need a reporter to tell him about child poverty in Toronto. The youngest of eight siblings, he was raised by his widowed mother after his father was killed in an accident.

His mother could barely feed and clothe them, let alone give them Christmas gifts and treats.

Young Atkinson was watching children skate on a pond when a woman he did not know asked why he didn’t join them.

Atkinson explained his family’s tough circumstances and then the woman shocked him and forever changed him: she gave him a pair of skates for Christmas.

That was perhaps the happiest day of his childhood. When he got some money and power of his own, he aimed to pass on that happiness through the Santa Claus Fund.

Back in 1906, many of the poorest children in Toronto lived in the crowded Ward district, a neighbourhood bordered by Yonge Street, University Avenue, College Street and Queen Street, and close to factories.

A nurse accompanied Santa Claus Fund volunteers and a reporter into The Ward that year, as they handed out 378 gifts, including candies, nuts, oranges, peppermint sticks, crackers and gifts that included tea and soldier sets, dolls, mouth organs and pocket knives.

“Nationality, creed, or colour hindered not the giving of the Santa Claus fund,” The Daily Star announced, tripping a little over grammar but oozing sentiment. “Distinctions were swept away and ‘the deserving poor’ sounded the key-note of the night.”

“We’re very glad to get it,” a father on King Street East told the Daily Star. “We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to get anything for the kids this year. I’ve been sick lately, and we’re short of money. This is truly a God-send.”

The fund made it through particularly challenging times, like the grinding poverty of the Great Depression. A young boy’s plea for help made it onto the front page of the Star on Dec. 21, 1936 as he wrote: "Dear Santa Claus: My mother is dead at Christmas… My father doesn't come home. he only says there isn't Santa Claus. When he sees me he goes out. he stands on the street. I go to bed. he comes in. I will fool him with a Santa Claus box. If you send it to Mrs. Botwell next dore I will get it. I will fool him. I will wait and get it."

While the contents of the boxes have changed, the basic concept remains.

Children longer get pocket knives, although they can count on sweaters, socks, mittens, hat, book, toy, candy, books and personal hygiene kits.

Those items reflect age — up to 12 years old — not gender.

Only cash contributions are accepted to ensure all children are treated equitably.

Names of the children, from newborn to age 12, are submitted to The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund by social and community service agencies.

The gift packages are still delivered by hundreds of volunteers, just as they were back in 1906.

Peter Edwards is a Toronto-based reporter primarily covering crime for the Star. Reach him via email: pedwards@thestar.ca