He looks a little like Santa, with a white beard and eyes that gleam behind those spectacles, so perhaps it's fitting that Gordon Mathieson spent some time this Christmas building a few toys.

Actually, make that a lot of time, and a lot of toys – 146, to be exact.

Mathieson, who was a B.C. Tel technician back when there was such a thing, enjoys working with his hands and has a nice warm shop in which sit some wood working tools, a wine press, a rock cutter, and a few old telephones of the sort that John-Boy Walton and brown-eyed Marcia Woolery might have conspired on.

Mathieson, who moved here with his wife Leona four years ago from Hope, said he wanted to make something for the food bank, and since he loves working with wood, he started building cars about a month ago. He made wooden cars a few years ago for the Hope food bank and enjoyed the process.

Many years ago, he made some children's wagons, and more recently he renovated a doll house that his grown-up daughter somehow got hold of – he's done lots of this sort of thing and become good at it.
But still, 146 cars is a lot of cutting and a lot of painting. There are 584 wheels on 146 cars, he says, and since he made each of those wheels by hand, he would know.
Home Hardware donated the wood for the cars, he says.
Meanwhile, in the house sits Leona, who has been knitting sets of hats and scarves for the food bank. She's got 15 sets down now and they're quite attractive. She's doing it because she know what it's like to live on a low income.
“I was a single mom for many years, and there was no help,” she says. That was long before she met Gordon, of course. Now she's got all the help she needs, and Gordon is even planning to cut some rocks for a new facing on the fireplace that warms Leona's feet as she knits.