Strangers save bears

Dear Editor:

I just want to send out a big thank you to the wonderful couple who rescued our family of Teddy bears.

Being the manager of the Centre Wellington Food Book for over 12 years, I have witnessed many wonderful acts of kindness from residents and the community as a whole and we are so grateful to everyone for their generosity.

This past week my wife and I worked together designing and putting together a new float for the Fergus Santa Claus parade. Our main focus was to put as many smiles as we could on the faces of both the young and the old so we decided to use bears to achieve this.

We arrived at the A.O Smith parking much later than we had planned but there were some very strong, gusty winds that morning so we wanted to make sure the float was well secured before we left. After we got assembled in the line-up, we decided to get out and inspect the float one last time. To our absolute horror, our float of Teddy bears had vanished and was not on the van.

Many of the bears we used on this float are my wife’s heirloom bears and have been in her family for many years. We had to accept the fact that we would be in the parade without a float. However, and more importantly, we had to try and find the lost family of bears which we believed had to be stranded somewhere on the road.

As we drove out of the AO Smith parking lot, a truck drove in at exactly the same time with a big box of bears in the back – our bears! This was a very happy moment for us and a great relief. The couple that had rescued the bears and returned them to us had seen them fall off of our vehicle. Of course it was too late to re-attach our float so we continued on with the parade.

We are very grateful to this couple for their thoughtful and quick action.

And a big thanks to the Lions, Optimist, Kinsmen and Rotary Clubs of Fergus and everyone involved in organizing this wonderful event each year. We are still living in a tumultuous time and this parade is the momentary distraction that all of us need.

Fred Aleksandrowicz,
Fergus