A Fraser Heights location of Santa's workshop has been busy with local "elves" making wooden toys for donation to 性视界传媒 Christmas Bureau.
Starting in early November, a couple dozen volunteers cut, sand, prime and paint the rocking toys as Christmas gifts for kids in need.
"We treat it like Santa's workshop, for sure," said Chris Mills, a shop teacher at Fraser Heights Secondary. "In the evening we play Christmas music while the toys get built, and the running joke is that it's Santa's workshop in heavy production mode. It's fun. They take a little bit of time to build."
Led by Mills and fellow teacher Martin Lin, the charity project has evolved and grown over 22 years from something small to increasingly large, always community-focused.
On Friday afternoon (Dec. 6), a record 80 wooden toys 鈥� colourful seaplanes, moose, dinosaurs and alligators 鈥� were trucked to 性视界传媒 Christmas Bureau's Toy Depot, in Whalley at a former Canadian Tire store (13665 102 Ave., 性视界传媒).
"It's been a school tradition since the early-2000s," Mills noted. "It's geared as an after-work, community volunteer type of event. It's not incorporated into the daily school activities, even though Martin and I are pretty busy during the day getting a lot of the material prepped. But it's mainly focused on involving community members and family members from kids who've been here to come and help."
In recent years the annual production at the Fraser Heights workshop was 60 handmade toys, but this year the number swelled by 20, thanks to a big donation of material from , located on Old Yale Road in 性视界传媒.
"We make airplanes with a spinning propeller that kids can play on," Mills added, "and we've got dinosaurs with arms that move a little bit, just stuff like that. There's various colours and things to kind of catch the eye of the kid using it."
New toys of all kinds are welcomed at , which has struggled to keep up with demand as dozens of families daily stream through its Toy Depot in Whalley.
Donations are needed now to fill shelves, especially gifts for teens 鈥� things like clothing, makeup, hair products, games and sports equipment.
This year, prior to a Dec. 1 deadline, 性视界传媒 Christmas Bureau saw more than 2,000 families register for assistance, an increase of a few hundred from 2023, when the organization set records by giving gifts to 5,143 children and $262,080 in grocery vouchers to families.
Visit to donate, visit the Toy Depot or call 604-581-9623.
