“It breaks our hearts, because we’ve seen such an increase in demand.”
Derek Kerr sat in his car outside a Salvation Army in 2012, feeling embarrassed.
The sick benefits from his private-sector job had run out. Bills were piling up, there wasn’t enough food in the house, and Christmas was coming.
He’d applied for a Christmas hamper, quite reluctantly, and they’d asked him to stop by and pick it up. He knew the package would be filled with ample food, including a turkey, and gifts for his children. He’d never done this before, but his family needed that hamper.
The memory resonates more than a decade later, he says, with inflationary pressures adding ever more people to the lengthy list of those who need help.
“There’s no food in the cupboard. You’re maxing out your credit cards, you’re doing what you can to keep going, because you’ve got to make mortgage payments and honour your debts,” says Kerr, who is now a Salvation Army captain in Saskatoon.
“The easiest thing to give up on is the food. I came into the house one day and my wife, with tears in her eyes, says ‘We’ve got to do something.The cupboards are bare. We’ve got kids.’ ”
So Kerr drove to the Salvation Army building near his house in Dundas, Ont., circled around, couldn’t bring himself to walk in. He finally Googled their public-relations department, and sent them a message: ‘I’m a little embarrassed, but I could use a little bit of assistance, if that’s possible.’
He got a call right after; he, his wife Angela and their kids were registered for a Christmas hamper. For the next two years, they remained Salvation Army clients while working to get back on their feet — monthly food hampers, and good-food baskets with fresh vegetables.
It all started with that much-needed Christmas hamper.
“You’ve got to look after yourself,” Kerr says. “You’ve got to look after your family. I know sometimes it’s hard, but we have to put away that feeling of shame or embarrassment. There’s help. There’s assistance. We just have to ask for it. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to say ‘I need help.’
“I can remember sitting in the car, even when they invited me to come down, out front of their food bank, making sure it was clear to get out of the car and go through the door just to make sure I didn’t see anybody I knew. Of course, that didn’t work out too well one time, because I ended up running into a buddy of mine who was making a financial donation. I stood there, almost like I was giving food, so they wouldn’t think I was taking food. There’s shame and there’s embarrassment — I get it. But you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to do it, not only for yourself, but your family.”
That shame is misplaced, he says, and it’s unnecessary. Need is need, help is help.
Kerr and his wife later volunteered for the Salvation Army, then felt a calling to work with them full-time. This is their third year in Saskatoon, and they say inflationary pressures mean an increased burden on the Christmas hamper program.
He does the math for us.
“We’re on track right now to surpass the number of families we helped last year,” he says. “We did 4,500 families last year, and the demand just keeps increasing, increasing, increasing. That equates to about 10,000 children, 6,000 adults, and that was in 2023.
“I don’t see the need decreasing. It’s just the cost of groceries, and a lot of it is the cost of living. Once you factor in rent and accommodation, the groceries and the food …”
Numbers have gotten so big that the local Salvation Army can no longer hand out actual, physical food with their hampers — they don’t have enough storage space to handle everything that would be needed. Instead, families get gift cards, which allows them to choose their own Christmas fare — ham, turkey, canned goods, potatoes, whatever they need. Plus they can tour through shelves of new toys at Army headquarters, and pick out gifts for their kids.
Kerr says Saskatoon has one of the largest Christmas hamper programs in the country. At his last posting in Ontario, they gave out roughly 1,000 hampers over Christmas. That total could hit 5,000 this year in Saskatoon, just because of the need.
“It breaks our hearts, because we’ve seen such an increase in demand, especially with the cost of goods and services due to inflation,” Kerr says. “We’ve had people come in, and they’re at their wit’s end. They’re at the end of their ropes. They’re lashing out, saying, ‘You don’t understand; you don’t understand what I’m going through.’
“I can sit down with them and say, ‘Look, I’ve been there. I get it.’ The last thing some people want to hear is ‘better days are to come.’ But it’s true. If it wasn’t for the Salvation Army, I don’t know where we would be at this point. We were able to keep living in our home. We were able to continue paying our bills. I even went to a budgeting course they had offered, and took advantage of all the programs and services the Salvation Army had.”
Kerr says he’s seeing an increase in the working poor who need help at this time of year — “We don’t see them any other time of year,” he says. “And they’re quite frank. They’ll say, ‘Look, I can get through most of the year without coming for assistance. It’s the one time of year I need a bit of help.’
“On Christmas Eve,” he adds, “it’s a good feeling when we’re done. We’re exhausted, the staff and volunteers are exhausted, but you know you’ve made a difference.”
So what was it like, that Christmas in 2012, after Kerr forced himself into a Salvation Army and picked up a hamper the family so badly needed?
“I was on cloud nine,” he says now. “We couldn’t afford all the stuff that was given to us that Christmas. There’s just no way. Each of the children received something they had wanted, because I filled out the forms and the paperwork — their interests and all that stuff. Even the food and the gift cards received, just invaluable.
“The tree had tons of gifts under it. The cupboards were full. It was a great Christmas, and I’ll never forget that.”
The Saskatoon Star Phoenix has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe.
With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.