Pouches from Peel

Fueled by a lengthy drought, the fire season in the Australia State began in September 2019.

Since that time, the wildfires have devastated wildlife causing thousands to parish. Many people have come together to support the variety of helpless animals. Social media has provided the means to share information about the tragedy but also how people can help.

A Facebook page let others know the request from down under and it started a trend. Patterns were printed off and the sewing began. Within 15 days, the site had over 11,000 followers all looking to help.  The request was for pouches or ‘hanging joey’s’, fabric sewn together in the shape of a 3D pouch.

Renee Patenaude a volunteer from Mississauga collected all 839 pieces (9 boxes), made by hand, in under 2 weeks, by those individuals living in our community.  Each large baby Kangaroo pouch takes approximately 60-90 minutes (depending on your skill level) and 50,000 stitches to complete.  As well as  a lot of love going into each and every one.

The word soon spread of this incredible act of kindness and others soon become involved. Air Canada offered to send one shipment, but then quickly became five domestic shipments and one International shipment. They covered ALL the fees, such as logistical costs and custom fees. To give you an idea of the cost, if individuals wanted to send a box on their own it would of cost well over $1000. 

Renee was kind enough to collect all the items, but still had the task of getting everything transported for lift off. That is where we came in. Officers from our Airport Division offered to pick up all the boxes and bring them to the airport, which saved a lot of time and money. Renee could not thank us enough for our help and support.

Renee a member of our community shared her reasons for helping, “I’m doing this because I should. When there is a need to help people and the planet – we all should. It is not only important to our community – but to our global ecology.”

This entire process from beginning to end, proves when individuals work together as a team, anything is possible.