Over the last few months, Prince George’s Gingerbread Toys has been busy sourcing and packing hundreds of toys to send to families in northern B.C. to help brighten Christmas despite COVID-19.
The toys were purchased by Newcrest Mine, who operates the Red Chris gold and copper mine near Dease Lake, as a part of the company’s COVID-19 relief fund.
Gingerbread is providing toys and activities for almost 500 families, which is over 1,000 people in total, to the communities of Dease Lake, Telegraph Creek and Iskut.
Owner Nancy Condon says the shop has been working on filling the order since September and the final boxes were shipped out on Wednesday (Dec. 16).
“I thought it was super cool that they have a relief fund that they wanted to spend on all of these families in these towns because they are so isolated,” says Condon.
She says that initially, she wondered if the small store, located on Domano Boulevard, could pull off such a massive order.
“Because the store is small, we ended up with all of the Iskut boxes at my house. It was close to 100 boxes and those were all packed and done at my house.”
Another impact of COVID-19 was that Gingerbread Toy’s regular suppliers in the U.S. had been temporarily shut down, so Condon worried if the store would even be able to source enough products.
“For the first order we did, we were able to use a lot of the stock we had in the store but then we didn’t have anything to sell for anyone else! Thankfully, we were able to get a bunch of really good suppliers on board and just ordered huge quantities of things and managed to get enough stock.”
The last 83 boxes of toys and games are now on their way to those regional families.
In a time when many small businesses are struggling, Condon says she is thankful Newcrest approached Gingerbread Toys to tackle the project.
“Thank you for thinking for us honestly. It’s a huge windfall in this situation to have a sale like that.”
