Food drive for Fort McMurray

Andrea Roberts
Times Intern

 

Holy Cross Collegiate (HCC) usually has a food drive twice a year, but this one was a little different.
Donations from this food drive will go to the Calgary Food Bank to be distributed to the Fort McMurray evacuees staying in the city.
“We wanted to see what we could do as a school and with our students to reach out to the people of Fort McMurray who have been affected by these fires,” said Tony Hamilton-Irving, a HCC teacher involved in the drive. “One of the things we know is that these people are in large part distributed through three different communities in Alberta, major centers including Calgary and Edmonton.”
The school encouraged all their students to bring a minimum of one item, mostly non-perishable like a can of soup or box of Kraft dinner.
The drive ran from May 2 to May 13 and the organizers managed to fill 15 boxes with 442 items.
Hamilton-Irving said it was a good way for students to connect with those affected by the fires and offer them aid. The school decided to dedicate this food drive to the evacuees after the Calgary Food Bank’s website reached out to people for donations, saying anything marked for Fort McMurray would be distributed to the centres in Calgary where they are staying.
The school usually donates their items from their food drives and clothes drives to the Strathmore Food Bank or the Strathmore Community Crisis Shelter. They have been doing this since the school opened 13 years ago as part of the charity work Catholic schools are required to do.