At the coffee club a few weeks ago, the members were shaking their heads and lamenting the passing of the old farm community and its instinct for coming to the aid of people in crisis. Barn fires, house fires, farm accidents and sickness…increasingly it seemed to the group that events that at one time would galvanize a community to action were now met with indifference. But I had to disagree. I’ve watched any number of times when one person has stuck up their hand and said, “Folks, there’s a problem here and we need some help.”
In 1962, in the village of Rosemont where my mother had her farm and I went to the two-room school on the highway, our neighbours up the road, Art and Lee Shaw, lost everything they owned in a disastrous house fire. They had four boys, the oldest one on crutches from polio. I’ll never forget how the neighbourhood went into action the morning after that fire. They found a house trailer and had it moved onto the site before the firefighters were finished putting out the fire. They stocked the trailer with food and clothes and linens and dishes. I was only 10 years old and it didn’t sink into me where all this stuff was coming from until one of the Shaw boys turned up at school wearing one of my shirts. At first I was a little irritated and then it suddenly dawned on me that I had become a philanthropist.
And I remember what Art Shaw said that day. He was leaning on the pickup truck watching all these people coming up his lane with laundry baskets full of blankets and dishes and he said, “When my family’s in trouble I don’t want the whole neighbourhood walking in to help us out...I want them runnin’!”
My wife saw a problem a few years ago. A single mother left on her own with six children and no place to go. Heath took her to the welfare office where the case officer told the woman she only qualified for $75 a month because she was working too many hours at her three jobs. She burst into tears. My wife took her out of the office and said, “Well, they’re no help.” She put up her hand to the community and the response was extraordinary. First, she asked about an empty farmhouse on a property slated for development and the developer said yes, of course. The house needed a lot of work. So, a crew of tradesmen stepped forward and offered to install new electrical, plumbing and oil furnace. The churches stepped in and paid for materials. Two schools did a food drive and filled the cupboards with canned stuff. A woman called and donated a side of freezer beef. I told her we didn’t have a freezer and she said, “I didn’t think you would. I’m bringing one with me.” Donations came in from everywhere. One woman drove up the lane and just handed us an envelope full of cash. She had heard what was happening and said she wanted to help out.
An odd thing I noticed while we were doing this was the way all of the people had to step carefully around some authority or another that would have told us what we were doing could not be done. I was pulling the grapevines off the hydro pole where the meter was installed and the electrician touched me on the arm and said, “Just leave those there,” he said. “I don’t think we want the inspector to tell us we need a new pole.”
In two weeks, the work was done. The family moved into a warm house with running water and new appliances. The helping went on long after that, because it takes a long time to put a family back on its feet. That was ten years ago and the mother found a wonderful new man and they are doing very well, in a new house they built themselves, right here in the community that transformed their lives with many small acts of kindness.
I was at an event just over the weekend where a couple told about how the Shriners took their son to Montreal to get a prosthetic leg after a farm accident. They said they never had to put their hand in their pocket once. Our community may not be driven by agriculture the way it once was but it is built on sturdy farm foundations and still has that old farmer thinking in its genetics. And it still knows perfectly well how to come together to help those in need.