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Christmas hampers packed with care and holiday cheer

Centennial Hall was buzzing with volunteers who came to help with the town’s Christmas Hamper project.
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Darlene Pohn (left) checks the list as Jeannette Lundgren adds more items to the shopping cart they are filling for someone this Christmas.

The heavy snowfall caused havoc in more ways than one around the town of Lake Cowichan last week.

On Dec. 18, Centennial Hall was buzzing with volunteers who came to help with the town’s Christmas Hamper project.

Some were organizers, some were packers, all of them chatting among themselves. They spent six hours at the hall filling shopping carts with items that would the next day be delivered or picked up by families whose names were on the list.

However, the snow added an extra complication to the logistics.

“The weather scared us,” said Angie Fournier, coordinator of the Cowichan Lake Community Services annual project. “We didn’t know how we were going to get all the hampers delivered.”

Fournier said once again the volunteers were outstanding.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them,” she commented. “Yesterday, with the amount of deliveries we had to do because of the weather — there’s no way.”

Lunch was prepared and served to all the volunteers by Mayor Ross Forrest and Councillors Jayne Ingram and Franklin Hornbrook.

In all, Fournier said, a total of 211 hampers were made and distributed this year.

“It went really well again this year,” she confirmed. “Every application we got we managed to fill.”