Thousands Of Toys On Cathedral Tree

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29107, 20 January 1960, Page 2

Thousands Of Toys On Cathedral Tree

It was like Christmas all over again. There was wrapping paper sprinkled with holly and greetings spilling from discarded cardboard boxes. There were toys everywhere as if children at a giant party had suddenly raided a loaded tree.

Twenty-five days after Christmas, this was the final stripping of Christchurch’s biggest and bestdressed Christmas tree, the one that stood in the Cathedral to receive toys from children for children.

Miss M. Bowen, a member of the North Canterbury Committee of the Save the Children Fund was at the Cathedral for three days while the tree was there and saw Christchurch children—and adults—leave their gifts. Yesterday in a garage in Hawthornden road, Upper Riccarton, at the home of another committee member, Mrs Gordon Fairweather, where the cars had been turned out to make room for the toys Miss Bowen was one of a dozen workers who spent the day unpacking the toys from big cardboard boxes and repacking them into tea chests to be sent to children overseas by the Fund. “Gave Their Treasures” “Those children really gave their treasures,” said Miss Bowen. And they had. There was a toy typewriter, there were toy pianos, sewing machines that sewer, a xylophone.

a doll’s pram, plastic telephones, walkie talkie dolls, a miniature lawn mower, a fluffy clockwork rabbit altogether more than 3000 toys which is more than Christchurch has ever given before for these overseas children whose primary needs are food, shelter, and education but who, nevertheless, like all children, need something to play with too. There were obvious bedtime “treasures,” a home-made floppy rag doll, a big blue elephant, golliwogs, rabbits, an army of Teddy bears. And there were things that were obviously new

—like the dozen hand-made felt toys brought to the tree by a former Christchurch bootmaker, now more than 90 years old. They were not all toys either. There was a big tin of dried milk, a child's singlet, handkerchiefs, and cakes of soap. Paper and Pencils A pile of carefully-packed stationery, exercise books, paper and pencils, was a special gift from children and staff of the Christchurch South Intermediate School for a Korean island leper colony where a teacher is trying to start a school with nothing. For these children there was a special box of things to helpbooks. puzzles, paints and crayons and some out-of-school playthings, a koala bear, aeroplanes, motorcars, and ships. There were mountains of books, to choose from, innumerable sagas of fourth, fifth, and sixth form in schools that could never have existed anywhere, of animals whose adventures enliven the education of Western children. Outside Mrs Fairweather’s garage there is an impressive rank of tea chests all waiting to start the next stage of their journey. As Mrs Fairweather's 17-year-old son James nailed them up, her 11-year-old greatniece, Angela Blackie, who had come over for the day to help, passed a final verdict on them. “Some kids,” she said, “are going to have the time of their lives when they get this.”