Christmas may be over, but a few volunteers in the community haven’t forgotten the spirit of giving.
“It really teaches the boys about doing community work,” said Candace Sipe, the treasurer for the South Peace Scouts. Her organization will help the City pick up these trees.
This year, the pick-up will happen on Jan. 19. Sipe advised anyone who wants to have their trees taken away to have them ready at the front driveway with all the tinsel and decorations removed.
Sipe said that the decision was made to do it later in January to account for Ukrainian Christmas, which will take place next Monday. That Christmas happens in January rather than Dec. 25 because the Ukrainian Church follows the Julian calendar.
Sipe said that the trees will be picked up from the front driveway, and that volunteers will not pick them up from their rear driveways. Afterwards, the trees will be driven on trucks to the city’s rodeo grounds.
“I believe the City just chips them up and puts them through a machine and they put them in the flower beds during the summer,” she said.
In the past, the children have amassed “a huge pile” of trees from the city, said Sipe.
“The pile is like, gosh, I would say eight to nine feet high, maybe 10 feet wide.”
While we typically associate the Scouts with boys, this year one girl will also help carry in the trees. She will not be the only girl out there, since the Girl Guides of Canada will also be chipping in to help chip these trees.
While Sipes is welcoming to the help, part of the Girl Guides involvement is out of necessity. Sipe said that the group has seen the amount of parental volunteers come short in recent years.
“We’re short right now,” she added. “We have a parent who stepped up so we have enough for numbers but nobody’s volunteering to run the program … so if we have enough volunteers we could have enough for each age group and bring them in for boys.”
However, Sipe said that the group has seen enough younger boy scouts enter into the program, more parental involvement is needed, since they would supply the vehicles necessary to transport the trees.
