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A parade of volunteers
?Uxbridge’s wonderful Santa Claus Parade, which wound its way eastward on Brock Street this past Saturday morning, is not just a spectacle for the eyes and ears. If you read between the lines, it’s also a tribute to the legendary volunteer spirit of this community. The parade itself, of course, entails the efforts of hundreds of volunteers, from the organizers led by Angela Horne to the people who spend hours constructing the floats, to all those who show up on an often chilly morning to participate in the event itself. But almost all the entries in the parade are also about volunteers.
Take the beginning and the end, for example. Leading the charge, as he does every year, was Uxbridge’s Town Crier, Bill McKee. Bill spends hundreds of hours at dozens of events every year, his big voice contributing a splended sense of pomp and ceremony to the proceedings (only a few hours after the parade, Bill was the lead act at the Old-Fashioned Christmas Concert in Leaskdale). Despite his professional-quality singing voice (and prize-winning crier’s voice), Bill gets paid nothing for singing at concerts or events like the Steam Show, and not much more as our town crier, barely enough to cover the cost of costumes. Yet he leads us marvellously year after year, and does the same for Scugog and Oshawa! The man is tireless.
At the opposite end of the parade (actually at both ends) are Uxbridge’s fire department, our almost entirely volunteer fire department. These gentlemen are, of course, the ultimate volunteers, prepared to put their lives on the line every time they get the call. It almost never comes to that, of course, but they don’t know that as they race to the fire hall through the streets of Uxbridge. Could this be the time that they and their comrades are forced to enter a burning building in search of a lost child? Could this be the time that one of them doesn’t come back home? It must fleetingly cross their minds, but it doesn’t slow them down as they hasten to put their skills into action.
Somewhere in the middle of the parade every year is the Roxy Kids float, which often wins the prize for best entry (we don’t know if it did this year, we weren’t able to get the results by press time). The Roxy Kids are volunteer prodigies, young people who just chuckle when they get to high school and find they’re required to volunteer 40 hours in four years. With the Kids, they put in that many hours in a month!
The Queen of the Roxy Kids, the mastermind behind their inventive floats, is Cathy Christoff, co-owner of the Roxy with her husband Mark. She is probably also the Queen of Volunteers in Uxbridge, with all the charity events she and Mark put on. And if she’s the Queen, the King is Pat Higgins of Canadian Tire, whom you’ll read about on page 7, in connection with one of the many charitable projects he’s involved in. It’s quite remarkable that these people, community leaders as they are, also have time to be accomplished businesspeople and raise children as amazing as themselves.
Perhaps this would be another good time to remind our readers that if you’re not currently involved as a volunteer in Uxbridge, you’re missing out on a greaty opportunity, and there’s no time like the new year to start. Your talents and interests are just what some service organization, church, school, arts or sports group is looking for. If you’d like to know how to start, you could talk to Pat or Cathy, or just call us. We can point you in the right direction, and you’ll never look back.
