Vancouver Sugar Factory Has Sweetened Marijuana for Empty Stocking Fund for Decades

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Pipe fitter Mike Martin helped organize a Christmas raffle for decades to help others less fortunate.

Author of the article:

Susan lazaruk

Undated brochure photo of Mike Martin, a retired pipe fitter at Roger's Sugar, with his copper wire art. He moved to Sarnia, Ontario in retirement, but each year he continues to donate a couple of his wall art for the Roger's Sugar Plant raffle drawing, proceeds from which go to the province's Empty Stock Fund.
Undated brochure photo of Mike Martin, a retired pipe fitter at Roger’s Sugar, with his copper wire art. He moved to Sarnia, Ontario in retirement, but each year he continues to donate a couple of his wall art for the Roger’s Sugar Plant raffle drawing, proceeds from which go to the province’s Empty Stock Fund. PNG

You can take the child out of the sugar factory, but you cannot take the sugar factory away from the child.

More than two years after retiring and moving from British Columbia, pipe fitter Mike Martin remains connected to his old workplace at Roger’s Sugar on the East Vancouver waterfront.

Martin worked in the store behind the large packing house for 42 years, and for 30 of those years, he ran a Christmas raffle and sent the money to The Province Empty Stocking Fund. He started the Christmas tradition with welder Bryon Sinclair “by chance, actually.”

“We set up a Christmas tree one year in the store and hung a bunch of candy canes on the tree,” he recalled. “The guys would take a candy cane and leave a donation. We didn’t know what to do with the money. “

They decided to donate it to charities and it evolved in later years to run a raffle to raise even more because: “Once you get the bug, that’s right,” he said.

A couple of years later, plant manager David Elliott offered to match the donation if workers raised $ 500 and the challenge continued. Subsequently, the company matched 10 times that amount, Martin said.

The prizes were modest and ranged from home baked goods or homemade wine to T-shirts, coffee mugs and hats, toolkits and a television one year, and artwork by some employees.

After he retired, Martin started creating and selling small tapestries out of scrap copper wire – “I only earn enough to buy more wire and a little money for beer” – and donates two to the raffle each year. The Mexican sugar skull is a popular design, and this year he is donating one of a man and a woman in a canoe under floating hearts because “a lot of guys are getting together.”

The giveaway was held in pre-COVID-19 times during the store’s Christmas party, where everyone was bringing food and there was a big cup of coffee.

“It was crazy, everyone was eating and half of the workshop workers were there and the plant manager would come,” he said. “It was a great thing.”

They raised so much money that it took a separate bank account and the help of the cafeteria worker to collect it all.

“It’s very easy to get started,” Martin said. “This thing just came out of nowhere. I would fully encourage people to start something, to help others.

“You have to give something back.”

Reference-theprovince.com

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