Innisfil’s very own Christmas elf is at it again.
Brightly adorned in red and green and wearing a jolly holiday hat with large protruding ears, Richard Ratte expects to split his time between the Innisfil Tim Hortons drive-thru locations during Holiday Smile Cookie Week, which runs Nov. 18 to 24.
“We were picked as charity of choice for the Tim Hortons Innisfil group,” says Ratte, an active volunteer and board member with Community for Kids (C4Kids), formerly Christmas for Kids.
Ratte happily chats with drivers waiting to place their orders at the coffee shop chain’s local stores. He’ll tell them about the work C4Kids does in Innisfil and how the cookie profits will help the organization help those who could use support.
Or he might talk about the weather.
All of it in good fun.
“Parents with kids in the back seat would roll down their window so I could say 'hello',” he says of his experience last year. “I was surprised at the popularity.”
“It started a few years back at the Santa Claus parade,” the Christmas elf explains. He found his grandson’s costume in the basement and decided to put it on.
“I was surprised at how much the little kids enjoyed it and even the parents.”
C4Kids began as a seasonal charity but expanded to meet an identified need in Innisfil that wasn’t addressed locally. It now has a slate of initiatives running at various times through the year to help feed, clothe and equip those who could use some help.
Tim Hortons locations in Innisfil Heights, Alcona, Cookstown and Thornton are donating cookie contributions to C4Kids and Ratte figures he’ll help things along a little.
Ratte’s plan this year for the first day was to start at Alcona at 6 a.m., leave at 9 a.m. to get to the campaign’s kick-off at the Innisfil Heights store at 9:30 a.m. and then head back to Alcona.
Ratte gets a kick out of connecting with people of all ages. When school breaks for lunch, he often sees teenagers pull up and they’ll have a little chat, learn about the community organization and they’ll often end up buying cookies.
He hits the street too, visiting businesses on Innisfil Beach Road where he’ll sell several boxes of the cookies.
Last year, 19,218 cookies were sold at those four Innisfil-area locations, resulting in $28,827 raised for C4Kids.
The energetic octogenarian says he gets just as much back in his efforts to give to the community as it receives from him. And he appreciates the value.
“Were nothing without people who care and donate and give to the community,” he says.
He appreciates C4Kids and is impressed with how well the organization and all its activities are organized. He also appreciates that he’s the only man on the board — probably because he has a truck, he quips.
But Ratte is no stranger to hard work and giving back.
Since he moved to Innisfil from Oakville in 2008, he’s made a point of getting involved.
“I was lucky enough to do some work with the South Simcoe Streams Network, planting trees, restoration on riverbanks where they install Christmas trees for fish habitat and erosion,” Ratte recalls.
And he enjoyed volunteering with the town’s community kitchen.
This year, along with another community member, Ratte has been involved in organizing the Salvation Army kettle campaign in Innisfil. They had 48 shifts to fill between Dec. 5 and 21 and almost all, with the exception of a handful, have been filled.
And once the cookie campaign wraps up, Ratte expects to focus on the C4Kids Christmas campaign, putting together food and gift hampers for something in the area of 250 families.
It all sounds exhausting. But Ratte says that’s not the case.
“You keep busy when you’re retired,” he says. “Sometimes its tiring but mostly its exhilarating. There’s so many good groups in I it’s hard not to be active.
“It’s been a good ride, it’s been a very good ride."
