Around 160 people attended the Kiwanis Club of Paris-Brant’s Breakfast with Santa at the St. James Anglican Church in Paris on Saturday, November 25, 2023.
The annual event has been running for the past six years and always takes place on the last Saturday of November.
Sheila Moore, President of the local Kiwanis club, said that the event all started because she happened to know Santa Claus and had asked him to take a few hours away from his busy schedule at the North Pole, since then he has made a point to visit every year.
The event has since grown in popularity and the club offers two sessions for families to choose from, one at 8:30 a.m. and the other at 10:30 a.m., both of which often sell out two-weeks in advance.
Volunteers like Ruth Doherty, spend their morning serving up hot pancakes, sausages, juice and coffee to families, while Santa mingles with the youngsters and poses for photos.
Moore said that one of her favourite things about the event is seeing the people who have made it a part of their own family tradition.
“It took a couple of years to catch on, but I’m at the point now where I can look around this room and recognize all the families that come back year after year,” she said. “It’s great to see people come with new babies, or to just see how the kids have grown since the last time.”
The club president said that while the event isn’t a fundraiser, any money that they happen to make, will go towards the organization and its efforts, but that they try to run the breakfast so its revenue neutral.
“In our mind, we see this as more of a service project for the community, so that’s our focus,” she said.
She also noted that because they are a non-for-profit, they couldn’t put on the event without the help of their sponsors.
“We had three big sponsors who came in and really helped us out with most of the food,” she said. “We got the coffee complimentary from the Tim Hortons on Rest Acres Road, No Frills gave us a gift card for the juices, pancake mix, and the syrup while the Paris Sobey’s provided us with the sausages. The rest of the sponsor money we were able to get some supplementary things, like the plates, and cups, but also this year we were able to give out little gifts so that everybody who came to see Santa could select a little present.”
She said the one thing about Kiwanis mandate is that it’s all about giving back to the children.
“100 per cent of the donations we receive at our fundraisers, goes back to the kids, it’s never for the members or administration,” she said.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
