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His hours have brought in $25,000 - Wales Home volunteer extraordinaire |
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He’s an affable gentleman with a ready smile, willing almost any day of the week to give residents at Foyer Wales Home a lift to town or even further for medical or other appointments.
Allan Banfill has been turning up regularly here for more than 10 years, transporting blood samples to the Windsor clinic on Mondays and organizing shopping trips for residents on other days, seemingly unperturbed by bad weather or the time required to fulfill the requests that never stop.
Banfill is a retired Bell Canada employee, once selected to travel and work on the communications set up for the Distant Early Warning system (the DEW line), constructed to warn Canada of an attack along its vast northern airspace.
“When I retired they invited me to join the Volunteer Association, a company policy at that time. Anyone wishing to join agreed to donate at least 500 hours of volunteer activity and each year this goal was reached, the company agreed to donate $2,500 to the organization where a volunteer was serving.
“Considering I’ve been getting that cheque for the Wales Home for over 10 years now, this home for seniors has received over $25,000 from Bell Canada. I am very proud of that,” Banfill said.
All this despite beginning his formal schooling a bit late.
“I was nine years old when they sent me off to school. We lived quite a distance from the main road and my parents thought I was too young to walk over two miles out to the point where the bus (it was a sleigh pulled by horses) would pick us up and take us to the one-room school house a few miles further on.”
Banfill, born in 1931, smiled: “The streets in Richmond were not plowed then. They had these large wooden rollers, also pulled by a team of horses and they would roll the snow-covered streets, compacting the snow to a hard surface suitable for teams and sleights,” he remembered. “The funny thing about that was they plowed the sidewalks with a wooden plow.”
One can only imagine how much higher the street must have been compared to the sidewalks cleared of snow. Of course, sidewalks were wood, constructed with boards laid at right angles to the street which was, in warmer weather, still unpaved.
“I was born in Depression years and life was tough on our little farm.”
Banfill would be a young teenager when electricity came to country dwellers and even more years would pass before running water would make life easier in the house. “We milked our cows by hand and my father would sell butter and cream and maybe vegetables in the summer months, but it was hard going,” he remembered.
Banfill is now widowed. The couple never were blessed with children. “Helping out here at the home has been almost like having my own family. I take them shopping or bowling, sometimes out for lunch, make sure they get to appointments on time and try to make their days a bit brighter,” he said, that broad smile and twinkling blue eyes never wavering.
“All I have at home is a cat. He’s my friend or maybe it’s the other way ’round,” Banfill said, adding, “when I get home, he’s waiting for me, sitting on the windowsill and by the time I get the door open, he’s right there, ready to talk cat talk. That’s better than going home to an empty house,” he said, that smile appearing once again like a bit of sunshine peeping from behind a cloud.
“We discuss the events of the day and I tell him my plans for the next day — we eat together and later, curl up together too. He’s my reward actually, every time I come back from a day at the home.”
By Claudia Villemaire
April 16, 2008 |
Montreal Canadiens
