Last Christmas Day, I met a lovely woman who appeared to be well into her retirement years.
She was neatly dressed, well-spoken, well-mannered and trying mightily to keep her chin up while queueing for a free meal with the other people who couldn’t afford to eat.
“Let them go first,” she said, hanging back a bit from the rest of the line at the charity-run lunch. “They have children to feed.”
This was not where she expected to be at this stage of life. Yet circumstances had conspired to leave her alone, struggling with the reality that her entire monthly income — her Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits — was being swallowed, almost to the dime, by the rent for her one-bedroom apartment. She had nothing left for food or anything else.
Her predicament was hardly unique. “The overwhelming issue for seniors in B.C. is affordability,” read a report from the province’s seniors’ advocate this year. “They are simply unable to absorb increased costs for rent, groceries, transportation, property taxes, home support, personal care and other services needed as we age. Seniors in homeless shelters and food bank line-ups now appear to be commonplace. Inflation has hit seniors on fixed incomes hard with the cost of living being unaffordable for many.”
This shouldn’t come as a shock. We already knew that a quarter of those over age 65 live on less than $21,000 a year. A 2022 report noted the use of food banks by B.C. seniors had jumped 78 per cent in five years. Many couldn’t afford to maintain their crumbling homes, it said, and most didn’t have extended health coverage, meaning they couldn’t afford hearing aids, glasses, medical equipment….
Still, out of sight is out of mind. Isolated old people are much less visible than the more obvious faces of poverty that you encounter on the streets.
“It’s a forgotten demographic with the fastest-growing need,” says Anne McIntyre. She deals with that need every day at Soap for Hope Canada, the little charity she runs from a warehouse in Vic West.
Hers is an awesome outfit that marries frugality with generosity, working with hundreds of community organizations — including 130 in Victoria — to funnel millions of donated, repurposed and (as a last resort) purchased hygiene products to people who need but can’t afford them. At the charity’s foundation is its relationship with B.C. hotels that, rather than sending half-full and gently used items to the garbage dump, divert them to the non-profit instead.
All those little hotel-sized bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and body wash that you leave in your room? They go to Soap for Hope Canada, where volunteers pour them into larger containers for distribution to other non-profits.
Right now the focus is on putting together hygiene kits for low-income seniors on 91原创 Island. Volunteers have been stuffing Ziploc bags with toothpaste, toothbrushes, dish soap, Tums, deodorants, lotions, tissues, laundry detergent, nail clippers, vitamins…. There are also personal touches: facecloths knitted by volunteers, handwritten Christmas cards from local students, fancy soaps fashioned by a woman who temporarily turned her greenhouse into Santa’s Workshop for that purpose. Two years ago Soap for Hope Canada assembled 600 hygiene kits at Christmas. In 2023 that number rose to 1,000. “We’re at 1,800 this year,” McIntyre said this week. Most will be distributed in Greater Victoria.
Why the jump? Rising rents are a big culprit, as are property tax increases and food inflation. Pension payments haven’t kept up. (Sometimes they stop coming altogether; Victoria has no shortage of widows whose pension income died with their spouses.) McIntyre also notes that a charity that provided three meals a week to some of the hungriest Victoria seniors has lost its funding.
“It has a ripple effect,” she says. Without money, people cut back on the food and medicine they need to stay healthy.
So, yes, she is grateful to the Times 91原创 Christmas Fund, which has combined with the Sovereign Order of St. John to become the biggest funder of those hygiene kits this season.
The grant to Soap for Hope Canada isn’t the only one that will go to charities serving 91原创 Island seniors this Christmas. Many of the food banks they rely on will also get money. A total of 53 organizations shared more than $1 million last year, all of it donated by Times 91原创 readers. That’s a lot of organizations and a lot of money — but then there are a lot of people who, out of sight, could use a taste of the Christmas that many of us take for granted.
HOW TO DONATE TO THE CHRISTMAS FUND
• Go online to . That page is linked to CanadaHelps, which is open 24 hours a day and provides an immediate tax receipt.
• Use your credit card by phoning 250-995-4438 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.
• Cheques should be made out to the Times 91原创 Christmas Fund. Drop them at the Times 91原创 office in Vic West, 201-655 Tyee Road, Victoria.
• Or, for the duration of the postal strike, contact Maximum Express for free pickup and delivery of your cheque. Call dispatch at 250-721-3278 or email [email protected].
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