The kindness of strangers
 

Report in today's paper of a fella driving who sees a wallet in the road. The red $50 bill floating about alerts him.

He stops his car and gets out. He sees $20s blowing about too and walks around gathering them up - including one in a ditch.

He hands in wallet and cash to RCMP who then contact the wallet's owner who doesn't even know his wallet's missing. Apparently he drove off with his wallet on top his car after getting gas.

But we're not finished.

RCMP must have given contact details of the finder as the wallet owner, noting that everything is there, calls to thank him and then emails a money transfer of $100.

Still not finished.

The finder doesn't accept the transfer but doesn't want to upset the other guy by rejecting it so wonders what to do. He hears an appeal on the radio for the charity Coats for kids and decides to buy two coats - boy and girl - which he then donates.

Total including tax actually cost more than $100 so it cost him, the honest finder, to do it.

I don't know if this is a Canadian thing or a New Brunswick thing. While I've heard similar tales of generosity, kindness, honesty etc in the UK, I do get the impression I hear it far more in Canada.

Of course it might just be that Canada likes good news stories far more than the UK. But from my own personal experience I'd say Canada (or NB) was way ahead in these attitudes.

I never came across the expression "Paying it forward" in the UK.

http://vladsokolovsky.com/forums/pub...rks-smiley.gif

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

This has been going on for years in Canada under various guises.
The beloved Tim Hortons run one as evidenced by numerous articles on the web

Tim Hortons customers pay it forward 228 times in Winnipeg
For three full hours and 228 orders, a generous chain of Tim Hortons customers in Winnipeg picked up the tab for the people behind them.
Tim Hortons customers pay it forward 228 times in Winnipeg | Toronto Star

There must be something in the coffee in Manitoba as another article states this
Among the provinces, Manitoba remains the most generous.
Despite the overall decline in charitable giving, for 15 consecutive years Manitoba has led the provinces in the Fraser Institute’s analysis of private charitable giving,” Lammam said.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/arti...rous-canadians

Some like to remain anonymous others not as much. Some media outlets report these actions as a warm cuddly generous story others don't.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

It's a lovely story but not really limited to Canada. I was aware of the phrase Pay It Forward in the UK - I think it comes from a film (?) - but I see things like this pop up on Internet quite a bit from everywhere..

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I have a friend that runs a children's clothes shop in Waterdown, ON. She buys good quality used clothes from people and then re-sells them. About a year ago the store went through a really rough patch and she had to seriously consider closing down. She posted her predicament on Facebook, explaining the situation as honestly as she could. The next day she was swamped as the word flew around the village, even the local news came to interview her.

She was already feeling overwhelmed when a gentleman she had never seen before came in, he said he had seen the Facebook post and he purchased four $20 gift cards, bearing in mind that most items in her store are under $15 this was quite a take for her. Once the transaction was complete, he handed the gift cards back to her and told her to give them to her customers that needed a little extra help buying clothes and toys for their children and then he left.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Her shop isn't a Value Village by any chance is it? :lol:
Value Village prices way too high, Winnipeg vintage retailer says - Manitoba - CBC News

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

There was a film called Pay it Forward adapted from a book by the same name, released in 2000.
But the phrase came about a long time before that - it was used in a book called 'In the garden of delight' in 1916.
I remember Oprah Winfrey using the phrase a lot - can't remember if that was before the film or not though.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

No, its an independent, and the reason why she struggles is because she gives people too much money for the items she buys and doesn't charge enough for them when she sells them on. All of her friends (and a number of customers) have pointed this out on many occasions, but she insists that this is the way she wants to go.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Wow so she ignores some good business suggestions and ignores them and when in trouble does the Facebook Oh Woe Is Me. She then gets assistance from strangers to help her out.
So when is her next Facebook plea going to occur?
I wonder if the strangers who helped her out would have done if they knew the true reasons for her predicament.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Someone's getting upset at their telling off earlier. :rofl:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Very thick skinned my friend this site is kindergarten stuff compared to work :lol:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I wish I hadn't included that bit now. :unsure:

It was really just about people doing good deeds or the right thing. The concept of paying forward was only a brief mention in the report.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I can imagine. Well, I don't really need to imagine as we'll have experienced much the same 'attitudes' daily. :nod:

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OMG the kindness of strangers. Someone decided to donate as what is described as an 8 inch military shell to the CBC forcing an evacuation of the CBC building in downtown Toronto :rofl:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I don think Canadians are any better at helping others. From reading their Facebook pages they are just better at telling everyone what they have done

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Errr what do you think Facebook was invented for :lol: next you will be saying people on Linkedin don't embellish their profiles either.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I hope the stranger who nicked my bike in Vancouver last night pays it backwards :fingerscrossed:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Probably trying to save your life given the dangerous cycling in Vancouver you mentioned.

http://vladsokolovsky.com/forums/pub...ee1-smiley.gif

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

To make matters worse, i'd only just fitted a brand new bell :thumbdown:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Of course they know the true reasons, most of the people who came in are the ones who buy and sell there regularly, they are the ones who benefit on a daily basis. What's the matter with you today, trying to see how many people you can piss off?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

"Even" in Toronto :sneaky:

Reporter makes her first visit to Toronto since she left 30 years ago.

Breaks her glasses and loses her purse in Tim Hortons. Presumably she meant must have left it there.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Every xmas we hear of people giving up some time (or whatever) to help out at the soup kitchen (or similar) serving up dinner to the homeless.

It's what charities and charitable people do.

But there's a local Diner whose owner has decided to open xmas day to serve up a free traditional xmas dinner (Lunch 12-3) to anyone looking for company. This can include people stuck alone, as well as homeless.

The thing is it's snowballed. From the staff and their families volunteering to help out in cooking and serving up the free differ, there are now regular customers pitching in with various contributions.

Help was originally refused but they've been so overwhelmed with offers of help they can no longer refuse.

The building's owners have given additional space in case of large numbers or people turning up or wanting to spend extra time chatting and another company has donated furniture for that use.

It's the way it snowballed that made it newsworthy.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I don't know if we're better at it but it is there, comes from pushing each other's cars out of snow and boosting each other's batteries in the winter.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Today I heard a story of kindness which gave me a "thank God we're not in America" moment. The short of it is that someone I know, a cradle (at least I think she's a cradle) has a Dodge truck with a dually, it's huge but then she's in the horse business; it'll pull eight horses. She was explaining how she got it stuck in the car park pay booth at Sunnybrook (a big hospital not near here). "They don't allow for trucks in them big city parking lots".

I wondered what she was doing there and she said she was driving the neighbours to see their son who was in the hospital. He's been there for four months after falling from a roof and needing a square cut out of his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain. The parents need driving because they're Mennonites, they don't drive for religious reasons. Mennonites aren't eligible for the Provincial healthcare scheme so they, and their community, have been drained by the cost of all this medical care. They have no money for buses or trains or whatever. Driving someone to Sunnybrook every second day, say 100 miles round trip, when you think their religion is "crazy" is, I think, some serious kindness.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Surely/Hopefully religion has/should have nothing to do with performing acts of kindness.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

rr
Er, are you sure they don't qualify for OHIP? If not why not?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Found this in something called thecanadianencyclopedia

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I would hope not but from an agnostic point of view it's easy to see how one could be reluctant to support people who are from a culture one finds to be alien. Of course, if one has a religion then that generally precludes treating members of other religions with kindness.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Yes, I know that to be true. And it's not just the "old order" either. Mennonites are a culture at arm's length, they're not subject to taxation and they're not beneficiaries of state hand outs. Their lack of participation in the state education system allows them to maintain a cultural preference whereby the women are barely educated but are a couple of years better educated than the men. They're not like the Witnesses in rejecting modern medicine but, standing outside the tax system, when they need it, they pay for it.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

That's interesting about the Mennonites. Incidentally Witnesses only reject blood transfusions, not modern medicine in its entirety.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Not only blood transfusions. Organ donation and won't be recipients or organs either.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I don't see that at all. I view devout religion as something akin to a mental disorder and would take pity on the person. Mind you, I ain't agnostic. ;)

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

A young boy from St.George, Ont. died yesterday from brain cancer. In October the people in his town fulfilled one of his final wishes and brought Christmas to him. Stores put up Christmas decorations as did people in houses. A Christmas parade was held with artificial snow falling. Many strangers gave their time and efforts to allow the little guy one final Christmas, when they could just as easily have done nothing.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Interesting. I've come across a few At work but never knew that they were not OHIP. I know that they get lifts in from neighbouring farmers. The women sit at the cattle market selling eggs and talking to no one, the men have fun selling animals and talking to all the other men. I'm not impressed by them.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Well, there's a lot to be unimpressed about but I'm not sure that gender discrimination is high on the list. They are, after all, a branch of Christianity and no Christian groups are big on audible women. I'd have said their inbreeding, their unwillingness to educate their male children, their routine cruelty to animals and their willingness to use child labour in dangerous circumstances might be more objectionable.

I find them interestingly bonkers. Nothing suggests the irrationality of religion as well as the belief that there is a God and that he's specifically concerned with tractor horse power as configured from the factory; after market turbo chargers being theologically different from factory fitted ones. That's no madder, of course, than the beliefs of more familiar religions but it's a different flavour of bonkers.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I think there must be different kinds of Mennonites. Fifty years ago I visited Haiti in the company of a chap I'd met on the plane whose brother was a Mennonite missionary, in the forest south of Cap Haitian. The brother allowed me to stay at the mission-house at no charge for room and board, and showed me (us) the tourist sights, and got up at five a.m. the day before my visa expired to put me on the bus down to the capital. Such generous hospitality, to a heathen. There was nothing in the least eccentric about the missionaries.

(Mind you, a medical emergency never arose while I was there, so I can't say what they did in the way of healthcare...)

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I read the book a couple of years ago, and loved it. Excellently written, and I recommend it to anybody who's not a total cynic! I have no ambition to see the movie; it's one of those books that can't be improved on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_It...rd_%28novel%29

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

There are different congregations of Mennonites, Old Order, Open Station, 90hp, the window kicking schism and so on. However, none of them are Mormons.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Ahaaaa... :) That makes much more sense.

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On CTV Toronto, from Newmarket: Co-workers Suprise Scottish Woman With Ticket Home for Christmas.... awwwww.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

We went to a Christmas market in Calgary a couple of weeks a go, one where you pay to get in, we went to line up, when some other more important people than us barged their way in front of us. Karma was on our side when a lady came up to us and said, here are two free entries for you! We were thankful and it was amusing to see us being glared at by the two ladies that needed to get in before us lol