Whether you say “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Holidays,” or some other festive greeting that aligns with your beliefs and traditions, the Mirror would like to officially wish you a very hearty, “Right back atcha!”
This holiday season, we at the Mirror are celebrating the community itself.
We take great pride in telling you what’s happening around you in the Campbell River area, and we take particular pride in watching – and telling others – as you step up to the plate and help each other.
This time of year is easy to see the community coming together.
Whether it’s the outpouring of support for initiatives like the Knights of Columbus Christmas Hamper Fund – who gave out almost 1,200 hampers this year – or the tags coming off the Angel Tree in the lobby of the Discovery Inn, later to be replaced with gifts for vulnerable children within our community, to the kettles full of change and bills outside the city’s grocery stores, Campbell River certainly steps up to make a difference, and we are proud to be a part of that type of community.
And it’s not just the annual Christmas drives that benefit from being surrounded by such an amazing group of people like we have here in Campbell River.
It’s heartwarming to see the outpouring of support from the community when someone loses their apartment to fire, as happened on 7th Avenue a few weeks ago.
It’s wonderful to watch the community come together to gather their recyclables to support the Sea Cadets after they had theirs stolen in a break in back in the summer.
The Grassroots Kind Hearts initiative has trouble, at times, keeping up with the number of donations flowing in, but they manage to do so because those donations, in part, are of people’s time and energy to help them.
Campbell River is a place where people try to take care of each other – where it’s not always about “me first.”
And we’re showing the next generation that giving is better than receiving, as well, through initiatives like Everybody Deserves a Smile, where the students of Southgate Middle School collected and distributed goods to those less fortunate in our community while learning about the social issues that lead to inequality and the struggle of some vulnerable people among us.
We’re hoping we keep seeing that as we go through 2016, and we have no doubt that we will.
One of the most consistent things we hear when working on stories to share is some variation of, “When the community hears something needs to be done, the community gets it done,” and that’s not something that goes away when the calendar gets replaced on the wall.
That’s a state of being. That’s the way we are.
We’re proud of you, Campbell River.
And we’re proud to be part of you.