With the CP Holiday Train rolling into town on Wednesday, Dec. 17 to collect donations for local food banks, the City of Weyburn is facing off against Barber Motors to see who can bring in the most food.
Each team will reach out to the community for food and cash donations for the Salvation Army. Their goal is to be the team with the donations that “weigh” the most, with each dollar raised counting as one pound of food.
“The food bank challenge is important for one main reason: it helps fill the shelves of the Salvation Army food bank, and it fills those shelves to help local families beyond Christmas,” said Mayor Debra Button.
She noted that Christmas time is busy, and while there is a food bank donation truck at the Holiday Train, sometimes it is difficult to find, or the cold prevents people from bringing their donated items. “The challenge gives people another avenue to donate their items, and then they can spend the evening of the Holiday Train enjoying the concert and the entertainment with their family,” said Button.
“Sometimes we get caught up in our own world, and sometimes we forget those who are struggling. Christmas is especially a time to think of those in need,” said Mal Barber, owner of Barber Motors.
He said that helping collect food and funds for the Salvation Army is a good cause.
His staff is also definitely on board, and Mal feels that Barber Motors will represent themselves well in the competition. “People do feel a dedication to the good work of the Salvation Army, and their goal of helping people who are in need.”
A truck in the showroom of Barber Motors will be filled with all the non-perishable food items. Their cashiers will also accept cash donations. Mal noted that they will have a “Wall of Fame” and a few oil change coupons give-aways for donors.
For those who want to donate to the City of Weyburn, there are collection depots at City Hall and the Weyburn Leisure Centre. All donations will be entered into a raffle for swimming passes. Also, city staff are selling “Paper Food”, where a resident will get their name on a food item. Paper soup cans are $2, paper turkeys are $5 and full meals are $20.
CP Rail’s annual Holiday Train has two legs: the Canadian and U.S. tours.
The U.S. train will end in Weyburn, arriving on Wednesday, Dec. 17, as it has done for a number of years now, by coming up from the U.S. through Estevan and ending along Railway Avenue in Weyburn in the 500 block. The estimated time of arrival this year will be earlier than in recent years, at 5:45 p.m.
The public is invited to come out and see the train and take in the entertainment, and to bring a non-perishable food item for the Salvation Army’s food bank.
In addition to the donations of food and cash which are brought in by the public, the CP Rail employees provide a donation to the food bank, and this is presented at the beginning of the stage show, as the mayor is invited up to make the presentation to the Salvation Army.
The entertainment announced for the U.S. leg of the Holiday Train includes singers Kira Isabella, Tracey Brown and Home Free, an American a capella group. Kira Isabella has recorded her uptempo brand of country music for about a decade. She is a Juno-nominated country artist who has performed with Carrie Underwood’s tour in 2012 and in 2013 she won the CCMA award for Female Artist of the Year.
The group Home Free was crowned the fourth-season champions of the NBC show, “The Sing-Off” last year. Founded by brothers Chris and Adam Rupp in the early 2000s, they had been perfecting their live show for years before appearing on the NBC show.
Singer Tracey Brown is a member of a family of exceptional and celebrated musicians, the Family Brown. In her career, she has released more than 20 albums and was nominated for a Juno as Best Country Female vocalist in 1999, and is a member of the Canadian Country Hall of Fame.
The brightly-lit train is about 1,000 feet in length with 14 brightly-coloured rail cars, each decorated with hundreds of thousands of LED lights in holiday designs. Since the train began running in 1999, it has raised close to $9.5 million, and brought in 3.3 million pounds of food for food banks across Canada and the U.S.
