If you didn’t know Holiday with a Hero was back, there’s a good chance you at least heard it.
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In keeping with tradition, dozens of police cruisers, fire trucks and ambulances rolled through Chatham Saturday morning with sirens going and horns honking to escort 40 deserving children from a shopping spree at Walmart to breakfast and fun activities at the Bradley Convention Center.
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“It’s wonderful to be back,” said Staff Sgt. Brian Knowler with Elgin OPP’s Chatham-Kent detachment, an event organizer.
Volunteers from several OPP detachments joined members of Chatham-Kent police, fire, EMS, 911 dispatch, Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario Parks and Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) security personnel to help the kids shop for Christmas presents.
Rotary and CKHA volunteers were on hand to wrap gifts and serve breakfast at the Bradley Centre, where kids also enjoyed bouncy castles, face painting, and making Christmas cookies, Knowler said.
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“It’s great to have all the emergency services here all support each other, all supporting the community,” said Chatham-Kent police Deputy Chief Kirk Earley. “It’s just absolutely amazing to give back to these kids.”
“What I notice about the kids is the first gifts they get are for their family, not for themselves,” said Earkley, who’s participated for a number of years. “They always look to help someone else, that’s what it’s all about.”
“The firefighters love coming out spending time with the kids,” and enjoy working with fellow first responders, said Chatham-Kent Fire and Rescue Chief Chris Case said,
“When you see the parade of fire trucks, police cars, ambulances all going down to the Bradley Centre, it’s just fantastic,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in the world.”
This was a reset year for Holiday with a Hero, scaled back to 40 kids from the 100 hosted at the last edition in 2019, before it was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Knowler said.
The 100-child event was the biggest of its kind in Canada to his knowledge, he said.
There was no trouble finding volunteers, Knowler said. “We ended up with basically two uniformed heroes for each kiddo.”
“Our plan is to ramp it up again in every subsequent year,” he added.
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