Paul Rodgers
Cranbrook is a community that bands together for one another, as demonstrated by the numerous and successful fundraising campaigns that took place over the holiday season like the Turkey Drive or the Starlight Campaign.
But in addition to supporting larger organizations the people of Cranbrook are also quick to come to the aid of individuals who are in need — even when they haven’t asked for it.
After Al Haskell and Trina Howell’s family home caught fire on September 8, 2016, they were launched into a dispute with their insurance company that is ongoing today and has put them into massive debt — somewhere around the $100,000 mark, with their investments depleted, and their credit cards and lines of credit maxed. The process has seen Al and Trina live in a trailer outside their property with an infant son, and two of their other kids being sent to live with family in Trail, while they did much of the repairs themselves.
Currently Al and Trina have five kids living with them: Iain (11), Faith and Daryn (8), Joey (17 months), and Joseph — a seventeen year old they took in after his mother, Trina’s best friend, took her own life. They are a family with strong values; always willing to open their door to others. They started a Facebook group to document the ongoing struggle with their insurance company, but they have never asked for help.
“I just really feel like there’s always someone who needs the help more, who’s more desperate for the help than us,” said Trina. “Like we’ll make it through and we’ll do what we have to do. There’s always someone who needs it more than us.”
So when a few people from the community got word of their story and took it upon themselves to make sure this struggling family got a good Christmas, they were caught completely off guard.
On the night of December 18, Trina received a call from Sara Jerke, the mother of another child on Iain’s lacrosse team, saying that she had some paperwork for her. Trina met Sara in a parking lot, and was told that Sara had been in a very similar situation just three years ago, struggling through a very lean, stressful Christmas.
That’s when she opened the door to her truck, revealing a load of gifts, packaged for each member of the family — including the dogs — along with a family box containing games and Kootenay Ice tickets and a centre piece Christmas tree adorned with gift cards totalling nearly $400. They also provided all the necessary fixings for Christmas dinner.
“Our entire goal for Christmas was just to be under one roof as a family, nothing else mattered to us other than that,” Trina said. “And it wasn’t even the stuff that they bought us, it’s not even the stuff, it’s the fact that they cared enough to do it. They went out of their way to make our family holiday something special.”
“It’s surreal,” added Al. “Especially when you don’t know anything about it, like it’s one thing if you’re asking for help and you get a response from it, but when you’re blindsided — like I’m not much of a crier but I got to say it brought a tear to my eye for sure.”
“And I full on ugly cried,” added Trina with a laugh. “I’m not even going to lie about that.”
The gesture also profoundly impacted their young children, who have all had to learn some tough life lessons throughout the past year. With the traumatic event of losing everything in a fire, to the immense pressure of a legal battle and financial strife on the family, the kids needed a good Christmas.
“We said to the kids, this is what good people do for other people,” Trina said. “And we kind of just put it on them to say you know what, this is because we do what we can for others. And others are doing for us when we can’t. And that’s what you need to strive for, that’s who you need to be. And Christmas morning they were just wowed that they got the things that they got.”
Al said that he is “blown away” by the heart of Cranbrook, and added that the thing he is looking forward to most is when they are in a position again that they can do this for someone else.
Just before Christmas, Trina found herself in the Vancouver Children’s Hospital with her youngest Joey. They said it was experiences like this, where they saw many other families dealing with kids with cancer, or other serious illnesses, that were reality checks for them.
“Whatever we’re going through is absolutely horrendous and we can’t see daylight and then we hear a story of a young girl whose kid has cancer and we went, you know what, all our kids are healthy, whatever it is we’re going through at least we’re not going through that.”
While chatting with the Townsman in their home — that they moved back into in August but is still a work-in-progress — Trina and Al breezed past their own struggles, focusing instead on the actions of Sara, and all her “elves” who made Operation Christmas Miracle happen, or their friend Adienne Mitchell who brought them a laundry hamper full of gifts, to Doug at TD Bank, or Robin at the Brick and a whole host of others that have shown them generosity throughout their dark days. More than anything they wanted to express their deep gratitude to these people.
And most importantly, they focused on how this experience with suffering has been put into context by seeing the struggles of others. They talked about the lessons this has taught them and their children, how the experience, which very nearly broke them, has instead strengthened their family unit and how they can’t wait to be able to do something like this for someone else.