And for longtime member Shirley Thul, getting up and around in her home will be just a little bit easier.
Thul was announced Wednesday as the winner of a raffle for a Tuscany lift-chair from the local supplier of personal care and mobility products. Normally, the story would end there with a photo of a Shirley receiving her chair and that would be that.
But these are different times and nothing is normal -- not even a simple raffle.
Let’s start with just getting through basics of the raffle itself, as described by Elaine Parsons with Timothy Eaton Gardens.
“Easy Care Living Centre approached us in 2019 and offered us this chair if we’d like to raffle it off, and we said ‘yeah, we’ll do that, it’s a $900 chair!’” Parsons with a laugh. “It took us awhile to get our lottery licence but we got it and started the raffle, and everything we made was extra money for us to keep us going. It was really great.”
But once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, public ticket sales became all but impossible. The draw for the raffle was delayed, as well, and in the end Timothy Eaton ended up making just over $1,500.
“We were hoping for more, but it was just a bad time,” Parsons explained. “When I was pulling in the tickets, they hadn’t been able to go out and sell them. The nice thing is that’s $1,500 more than we had before though, and we’re just so thankful to [Easy Care Living Centre’s] Greg [Moore] for donating the chair to us. He’s just a fantastic person.”
In Moore’s eyes, it was just a chance to help out an organization going through tough times.
“With Timothy Eatons and the Cosmo Centre, there was a time when we weren’t sure if they were going to stay open or not,” Moore said. “So I approached Timothy Eaton’s with the idea of doing a raffle for a lift chair and all the tickets they sold would go toward the facility… We’re just happy to be able to help out in tough times, and especially with how things are going now with COVID-19.”
Thul, of course, was ecstatic with the win, but even that came with a caveat.
“It’s rather ironic,” she laughed. “I had just bought a chair and it was delivered on Friday, and then Elaine phoned to say I won this chair on Wednesday, so having that other new chair kind of took the edge off it. But my reaction was surprise, and I was really pleased. If only I’d have known I was going to win!”
The chair will be put to good use once Thul finds room for it, as she deals with arthritis and occasionally could use something to help her get her feet – a situation the lift chair is absolutely perfect for.
Normally a regular card player at Timothy Eaton Gardens, Shirley has kept herself busy with jigsaw puzzles in the meantime, a hobby that has become wildly popular during these days of self-isolation.
Parsons and her fellow Gardens board members have done their best to keep in touch with their patrons, especially since it appears it will be a long time before they’ll be able to reopen for activities.
“What we’ve also done, we’ve hand delivered ‘Thinking of You’ cards to all our members, just to let them know we’re still here, and they’re saying ‘thank you for remembering us’,” Parsons said. “We’re seniors, and being at the Eaton Centre we can’t just say ‘oh, we’ll just let 10 people in.’ It has to be a full open before we can open.
“People want to come down to play cards, get some exercise, play shuffleboard, come for lunch and breakfast and how can you do it with only 10 people allowed in? So we’re just going to wait and do what we can to make sure everyone is okay.”
