News Photos Anna Smith
Donated shoes line the walkways at Riverside Veteran's Memorial Park on Monday for the first Take a Walk in the Park event.
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
The inaugural “Take a Walk in the Park” was an incredible success thanks to the spirit of generosity not just from the people of Medicine Hat, but throughout the country.
A spiritual sibling to the Coats on Finlay event in the winter, the event asked for residents to stop by Riverside Veterans’ Memorial Park, either to donate used pairs of shoes that were still in good condition, to pick up a pair that they might need, or both.
“The community has just once again shown that they turn up and they support. We have all varieties of shoes. They’ve been arriving since mid-morning and the afternoon, and we have lots of people shopping. We’ve had families come in,” said Helen Snortland, who organized the event alongside Kym Porter.
Porter estimated they received at least one thousand pairs of shoes, both over the course of the day and in donated pairs given to the organizers prior to the event.
At the time of the interview, most of the paths within the park were lined with shoes, varying from steel toed or winter boots to high heels and sandals.
Porter and Snortland expressed gratitude to everyone who participated, both locally and those from Calgary and beyond who donated shoes or money to the cause.
They said they were not surprised by the turnout, they were delighted.
“It feels marvelous that we live in a community that wants to help their neighbors and their fellow community members out,” said Porter, who attributed the success partially to drawing on the same community spirit as which makes Coats on Finlay a success every year.
“What else I think helps with this response is that it’s only one day,” said Porter. “So we have things that we collect and we keep and we say to ourselves that we’re going to take it down to the thrift store or the Salvation Army, but we keep putting it off. But when it’s specific to one day, it seems to motivate people to do this now, because there’s no other day to do it.”
Any of the shoes that remained after the end of the event will be distributed to various organizations throughout the community, explained Snortland, such as the Health Foundation, and potentially the Mustard Seed, with a majority being gathered for the Lion’s Club International Foundation’s Soles for Souls program. The Lion’s Club organization’s program will ship the shoes where they’re needed throughout the world.
“We really just want to thank the community,” said Snortland. “People come down and thank us, but really, it’s everyone coming together that makes this possible.”
