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“We wanted to show we care, especially with the gifts for the children. I don’t want to forget about the children. This is not your ordinary hamper. I gave guidelines (age and interests of each family member) on what I am looking for in the hampers.”
He said he will “be doing these hampers in the future and do them every Christmas” alongside the lunch tradition.
Last year, Watts and others made over 500 turkey-sandwich lunch packages, that included mandarin oranges, hot chocolate, and handmade cards for those lining up outside the Aboriginal Front Door Society on the corner of Main and Hastings. Church choirs sang carols as people waited to receive their lunches.
Watts got the idea to give out turkey sandwiches on Christmas seven years ago because he remembered knowing what it is like to feel lonely and desperate during the holidays. He funded the small idea the first year and it grew from there.
He has talked openly about surviving residential schools, sexual abuse as a young boy, and trying to erase painful memories with alcohol. He was homeless at least two dozen times over some 27 years he spent mostly drunk, he has said.
Around 12 years ago, Watts went to a drop-in centre run by the Union Gospel Mission where he felt a sense of acceptance and that the staff really cared about him.
It was a “seed of goodness” and set him on a path of treatment, recovering and learning to love himself.
At the end of 2020, a year that has been more trying than any other for many, Watts wanted to let those who are struggling like he did to know that “this is not permanent.”
“We can pull through like I have done in the past, under the darkness,” he said. “It took a lot of courage and it took people who cared.
“This (pandemic) is really taking a hit on the planet. But there is hope for each and every one of us. We have to remember that people do care and this is just temporary.”
— with file from Gordon McIntyre
jlee-young@postmedia.com
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