The Gander Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) runs a variety of programs for military families, but they also bring their members together to help support the community in which they live.
In addition, they provide a connection to home for Armed Forces members deployed far from home.
As executive director of the Gander MFRC, Peggy Blake is responsible for overseeing many of their programs. She says MFRC members are always eager to help.
“Each year approximately 50 military families are posted into Gander, so our community is always changing, but the one thing that remains the same is their willingness to contribute to their new ‘home’,” she said.
MFRCs are not-for-profit organizations located on every Base/Wing in Canada. Their purpose to provide a wide range of programs, resources and support to military families. They serve the members and families of the Regular and Reserve Canadian Armed Forces, Canadian Rangers and CAF veterans.
One way the Gander MFRC reaches out to the community-at-large at Christmas is through their Angel Tree Campaign, run in partnership with employees of Service Canada and Nav Canada.
“This year marks our 28th Angel Tree Campaign. We place trees around the Wing decorated with craft angels and each angel bears the gender and age of a child,” Blake says. “All the gifts, gift cards and cash are collected and presented to the Salvation Army/VOCM in mid-December.”
In 2017 the Angel Tree campaign raised $3,200 in monetary donations, $380 in gift cards and provided 300 gifts for the Happy Tree.
This year, the MFRC also started a Mitten Tree, inviting the military community to donate mittens, hats and scarves to include with the Happy Tree donation. Blake describes this new aspect of the campaign as “an overwhelming success.”
While the Angel Tree and Mitten Tree campaigns provide community support in the Gander area, the MFRC’s care package program reaches out to deployed members around the world.
Blake says the packages, distributed at Christmas, Easter, and for Canada Day, are a key aspect of their work at the centre.
“The Gander MFRC has been sending care packages to deployed members since before I began working here and that’s 20 years ago, so it’s been a labour of love for us for a long time,” Blake says. “This Christmas we prepared 50 packages and they were sent to deployed CAF members in Latvia, Romania, Kuwait, Iraq, CFS Alert and on HMCS Ville De Quebec.”
“We fill the packages with lots of treats from home — Purity products, Vienna Sausages, pineapple pop, roast chicken chips, Downhome magazines, mummer decorations, and Caramel Log bars to name a few,” Blake noted. “We also include letters/cards with messages of thanks and well wishes from school kids from all over Newfoundland in the packages.”
Some of those thank-you’s come from students at St. Paul’s Intermediate School in Gander . The students take part in a ‘Treats for Troops’ campaign each year, filling bags with their extra Halloween candy and messages of thanks.
Blake says the care packages are always well-received.
“We are just starting to receive message back from soldiers that they have received their packages and they are so thankful, especially for the messages from the kids,” she said.
Whether their work helps someone on the base, down the street or across the world, the team at the Gander MFRC are doing what they can to make Christmas as joyful as possible.
The Gander Military Family Resource Centre also welcomes support and assistance from the community at large for any of these programs. Anyone wishing to offer their assistance can contact the Gander MFRC at (709) 256-1703 ext. 1206.
MFRC Christmas package a bright spot for Master Warrant Officer Lori Kelly while deployed to Afghanistan years ago
The day that I received a Christmas Package from the MFRC in Gander, I was just coming back from an eight-hour patrol. I was all sweaty and it had been a bad day. It was Christmas Eve. I dropped my kit and laid my rifle down on my helmet next to my work space, preparing to write some notes on the day’s events when I noticed a big brown box sitting next to my chair. It said To: Sgt Kelly, Fr: MFRC Gander.
Instantly I could feel my heart rate return to normal and my mood change from frustrated to happy, because I knew what that meant. I had been deployed a few times before so I knew what it meant to receive a package from the MFRC in Gander. It meant that I was part of something special, something bigger. Something that sets me apart from the rest of the sand, sweat, and fatigue. It meant that I am a Newfoundlander and that this Christmas, while in Afghanistan, I was gonna have a “time”.
I quickly opened the box and found Vienna Sausages, smoked oysters, crackers, Purity syrup, a pack of cards, candies, a Christmas hat, a CD and many more fun Christmas items. I dumped the items onto the floor and turned the box over so it could be used as a table. I called to my team members and invited them over to have a “time”. We all sat around the box and played a few games of cards while sharing all of the treats that I had received in my package. I was explaining to them that in Newfoundland, these were Christmas necessities. For a little while we all forgot where we were, and for me, it was a little piece of home.
