More Langley Township fire halls than ever held candy cane runs last month, with Aldergrove joining counterparts in Brookswood, Walnut Grove, Willoughby and Murrayville to go on pre-Christmas patrols with Santa to distribute candy canes and collect for charity.
In total, they gathered more than $10,000 in cash donations and several months’ worth of nonperishables for the Sources Langley food bank.
It was the best response yet, said Steve McLay, a director with Township of Langley Firefighters’ Charitable Society.
“It went awesome,” McLay commented.
McLay estimated cash donations were up about $1,500 from the previous year, thanks in large part to $1,000 collected by the new Aldergrove run.
An exact estimate of the total amount of food collected wasn’t available, but McLay said the Walnut Grove hall alone collected four months worth of food supplies.
READ MORE: VIDEO: Firefighters Candy Cane Run comes to Aldergrove for (maybe) the first time
Aldergrove run organizer Mark Butterworth, a paid on-call firefighter who works at Hall 3 in Aldergrove, couldn’t recall if any candy cane runs had ever been held there before.
Neither could fellow Aldergrove firefighter Kyle Power.
“It’s the first time that fire hall 3 has done one, that we know,” Power explained.
“[But] there may have been one long ago.”
McKay said the candy cane runs with Santa were started back when Langley had volunteer firefighters, and the runs have been continued by paid-on-call firefighters in different Langley neighbourhoods.
“It has been a long-standing tradition,” McKay told the Langley Advance Times.
McKay said firefighters are still working out which charities will benefit from the cash collected in their service areas.
“It’s all going to be kept in the Township,” McKay assured.
READ ALSO: Langley firefighter charity tops up half-million dollar hospice donation
dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter