Community News
Giving Back To The Community
If you would like to volunteer with our seniors program, please contact Laura at lauratoll@yahoo.ca
How It All Started!
Retirement Home Visits
In February 2019, Pantry Four Paws was contacted by a PSW who works in a local retirement home, asking if we could arrange a one-time visit with a cat. I volunteered to do the visit and did a pre-visit to assess the meeting space to determine safety measures for both the cats and the residents. I could see that this was something that could really make a huge difference in the resident’s lives.
After the first visit was such a success, I decided to do the visits on a weekly basis. The program has had a huge impact on their lives. Some residents, who used to stay in their rooms all day, now venture out to join us in the common room for cat visits!
I have had the help of many Pantry volunteers along the way, from foster families letting me borrow their Pantry foster kitties, to other volunteers bringing their own pets in for a visit! I am delighted to say that we just celebrated the one year anniversary of this program with no signs of slowing down! You can follow our Facebook page for regular updates on these visits, including adorable photos of the seniors interacting with kittens and cats in our care. ~ Laura Toll ~
Pantry Four Paws Seniors Day Out
After several weeks of visits to the retirement home, it was clear that they didn’t manage to get out much, except for medical appointments and practical errands, like getting new eyeglasses. I started chatting with staff and learned that they took the residents to Hutch’s once a few years prior and they all loved it, but there had not been any other outings. I started to wonder how to get the residents out and that is where the Pantry Four Paws network really stepped up!
Mary, our fearless leader, offered to foot the bill for their lunch, if we could find a way to get them out. Then Cat volunteered to help with transport (she is a bus driver with the HSR) and she drove the bus, too! She was also instrumental in organizing the event as she needed to ensure safety and accessibility for the bus and its passengers.
We had a fabulous day out in early July 2019, picking up the seniors at the retirement home with the help of several Pantry volunteers. We loaded everyone onto our chartered bus and took them to the new greenhouse at Gage Park. We had a Pantry volunteer for every resident, so we could keep everyone engaged and supported. We had our own private guided tour of the greenhouse, with a very knowledgeable young man telling us about all of the plants and their significance and the about the City’s efforts with the greenhouse in promoting horticultural knowledge. (Thanks to the City of Hamilton and to Cat Diaz for arranging that!)
We then took everyone to Hutch’s On the Beach
for lunch, followed by ice cream cones by the lake. The seniors loved it, many of them saying they hadn’t had as much fun in many, many years!
It was thought at the time that this would be an annual event…and it will be an annual summer event, sponsored by Pantry Four Paws! But, we’ve gone further than that! In the fall, I had several Pantry volunteers join me in taking the senior’s back to the greenhouse for the Mum Show. Our two communities are really merging together, which makes everyone feel good!
High Tea and Christmas Lights!
It came to my attention that the seniors, in their isolation at the home, really miss certain aspects of the Christmas holidays. They miss family gatherings, fun parties and hosting people. (They have a Christmas party at the home and their families come, but it’s not quite the same!) The other thing that was commonly missed amongst them was seeing Christmas lights. That makes sense, since they only ever go out in daytime! So I was trying to figure out a way of getting them out to see Christmas lights, even if it meant that I went every day for two weeks and took them out 2 or 3 at a time myself to see some lights!
Then I remembered a lovely place in Brantford that I had been to, and decided I would take the three ladies who always attend the cat visits every week without fail out for high tea and Christmas lights (because it’s expensive and I couldn’t afford to take everyone!).
Well, in comes our fearless leader again! Mary found out my plan and suggested I offer to take everybody, sponsored by Pantry Four Paws! This was challenging, because we couldn’t get a City bus or DARTS buses to take the residents outside of City limits, so we needed several Pantry volunteers to help with driving everyone there. Again, the Pantry community came through and we took many of the residents to the Golden Teapot, a lovely tearoom located inside the Glenhyrst Art Gallery and Gardens
in Brantford.
Glenhyrst is a large estate, with a period mansion that serves as an art gallery and several acres of gorgeous lawn. The tearoom is located in the mansion, in the solarium, looking over the estate.
Our large group and the myriad of mobility equipment wouldn’t easily fit inside the solarium, so we had a private tea, sitting in the art gallery itself, on a day when the tearoom is normally closed!
When the tearoom staff heard what we were doing, they opened special, just for us! So we had a private high tea party, followed by a slow drive through the estate afterwards, which is awash in sparkly Christmas lights! The estate puts on an incredible Christmas lights display every year, so we had the residents enjoy a twilight tea, so they could see the sun go down and the lights come on as they enjoyed their tea, then the volunteers drove them around the park to see the Christmas lights! The residents still talk of this event to this day, they enjoyed it so much!
