by Abbey Kelly
Toy drives and charity drives are happening all around the Greater Toronto Area in time for the holidays. At a high school in Burlington, a woodshop teacher and students of the school are getting ready to donate hundreds of handmade toys to less fortunate kids.
Corpus Christi Catholic Secondary School is having its ninth annual toyshop, where student “elves” volunteer to prep pieces of toys in the weeks leading up to one day of assembly. All of this overseen by the high school’s beloved woodshop teacher, Mr. Karniej.
Rick Karniej brought toyshop to the high school when he began to teach there in 2009, but it began long before that.
Karniej began the operation in 1994 when he owned his own business with two business partners. “We had heard there was a request for donations, we didn’t feel like giving money,” he says, “we were building toys anyway, for our kids, our nieces, our nephews, so we just decided to build a few extra and then hand ‘em off.”
Karniej says from there that it “just kind of bloomed,” and that year to year they “had to keep doing more and more”.
The first year they made about 70 toys over a two day period.
“When I look back on it I kind of cringe,” he says. There were about 25 volunteers the first year, with around 29 people in a professional shop. He says it was like “a wild wild west” and that they knew improvements could be made.
The toyshop moved from his business in Stoney Creek to Christ the King in Georgetown when he became a teacher in 2005, then Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School the next two years. Toyshop took it’s only year off in 2008, before finding its current home at Corpus Christi.
This year they are aiming to make 250 to 300 toys. They started prep on Nov. 19th for the toys to be assembled on Dec. 8th.
Over the years the toys were donated to different places, in the first few years it was Salvation Army and this year it is Children’s Aid in Halton and Hamilton.
When deciding where to donate the toys, Karniej says the group that is putting the Toyshop together calls and sees who is looking for donations.
“If it wasn’t for [the students], we probably may not have run toyshop this year,” Karniej says. He says this year there was difficulty in finding who would take the toys.
“It was the students that actually took the initiative, made some contacts and decided that we are going to continue to do this,” he says. “It’s passion, it’s heart, it’s talent, it’s even a little bit of childlike wisdom,” that students bring to Toyshop he continues.
On Dec. 8th, “anybody and everybody, from 4-years-old up to 400-years-old,” can volunteer as Corpus Christi Catholic Secondary School in Burlington, Ontario, to led a hand in the assembly of hundreds of wooden toys for less fortunate children.
Below is an interactive guide to charity drives around the GTA (By Allissa Hibbs)
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