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Please join us at this year’s Vancouver Motorcycle Toy Run.
Entry fee is a new toy wrapped in plastic (so that it stays clean and dry).
The event will begin with Motorcyclists riding out from Coquitlam Centre at 9:30 am, and the parade route will end at the PNE.
Everyone is invited to gather at the Pacific Coliseum at 10:00 am to drop off their donation.
We look forward to seeing everyone there.
The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau (LMCB) has just wrapped up another fiscal year and we have some positive stats to share as we move into the summer months.
In the last twelve months, the LMCB has shipped 107,611 donated items in total across the lower mainland. As well, we have helped 72 community agencies. Overall, the LMCB is proud to announce that our efforts and contributions have grown. While the volume of product moving through our warehouse is large, sometimes something as simple as helping one of our community partners by providing a single car seat to a family in June, resonates as much as helping over 900 families in December in Vancouver.
Currently, the LMCB is working with our many volunteers and groups in reviewing our existing events, and potential new events. We are planning for the 41st Annual Motorcycle Toy Run, scheduled for October 6, 2019. The Motorcycle Toy Run is considered the kickoff event of our season and involves support from four cities (Coquitlam, Port Moody, Burnaby and Vancouver), two venues and a very diverse group of volunteers. Universal Flagging has already confirmed to donate all their services this year and we thank them for helping to keep our route safe for participants.
The LMCB accepts donations throughout the summer and our team always looks forward to spending time in the cool warehouse sorting toys as the weather continues to warm.
As always, thank you to our donors, supporters, and volunteers. Your help makes our work possible.
We would like to share some heart-warming stats to launch into Spring season.
The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau has improved and succeeded in our efforts to connect with more agencies this year. Product donations were shipped to 64 agencies since the start of our fiscal year in June 2018, in addition to the 929 families the LMCB directly helped in Vancouver through our Christmas Assistance Program.
We are grateful for all the donations we received, and our team and volunteers had a blast sorting through all the gifts and toys for children and teens in need. Thanks to our donors and supporters generosity, we have distributed over 103,000 items across the lower mainland so far and are continuing to do so.
The LMCB is truly appreciative and in awe of our amazing community of volunteers! More than 2,200 hours of volunteer hours have been contributed at the bureau and our events to make our work and mission possible.
We look forward to continuing our work into the warmer months and spending time in the warehouse accepting and sorting product donations.
Our LMCB hard working staff team and generous volunteers wrapped up our final day of registration for our Christmas assistance program for the 2018 holiday season. We served over 900 families with a total of over 2,000 children in Vancouver this year and shipped many tens of thousands of gifts across the lower mainland.
Thank you to everyone for their support and contributions! You helped make Christmas brighter and happier for so many people across the lower mainland.
The LMCB wishes everyone a safe, warm and Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Here are some highlights from the 2018 holiday season that we would like to share with you.
Please note that if you have gifts and toys you would like to donate after Christmas, our warehouse we be open again starting on January 2nd, 2019.
A big thank you to the Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association (GVHBA) for running its 23rd annual Coats for Kids campaign from November 1 – 30 in support of the Lower Mainland Christmas Christmas Bureau and the Surrey Christmas Bureau.
On Friday November 30, 2018, GVHBA members gathered at the GVHBA’s Christmas Wrap- Up Party to amplify their spirit of giving. The response this year was truly heartwarming with Metro Vancouver residents donating more than 6,000 items to 54 GVHBA member companies, who opened 67 drop-off locations in 16 municipalities across Metro Vancouver. We would also like to thank the GVHBA for their fundraising campaign and monetary donation.
Check out more photos of the event and wrap up party here.
The annual Vancouver Giants Teddy Bear Toss Game returned this year on December 8th at the Pacific Coliseum. Stuffed animals rained downed onto the rink in the Vancouver Giants vs. the Victoria Royals.
See more: The Vancouver Sun Article: Teddy Bear Toss! at Vancouver Giants Game
The 31st Annual Pan Pacific Christmas Wish Breakfast was held on December 13th this year. We always have so much fun at this event and love seeing everyone who comes out to donate gifts for children in need. Thank you to the Pan Pacific Hotel Vancouver, Global BC, and Rock 101, and all of our supporters.
The numbers are in... over 44,000 lbs of #toys 🧸 were collected and $26,000 💵 were raised. Once again #THANKYOU for your #generosity and making families brighter this #holiday season across the #lowermainalnd 👍❤️👏
— GlobalBC Community (@GlobalBC_Comm) December 14, 2018
It is always a treat for the LMCB when Translink BC arrives with the Sparky the Elf and the special Reindeers buses filled with gifts to donate. This is the 33rd year of the annual Toys for Tots toy drive and 3,304 toys were donated to our warehouse on December 20th, 2018. Thank you to Translink and their dedicated team for your long time support.
By: Angela Lee
The holiday season has arrived and we are excited to be assisting families with Christmas celebrations again this year! Our staff and volunteers are delighted to be back spreading Christmas cheer.
December 5th opened the first day of registration for our annual Christmas assistance program. Each family that we help receives a grocery store gift card for them to purchase items for a warm Christmas meal and parents get to select for gifts for their children in our pop-up toy store.
We would like to thank the Rogers Communications volunteer group who came to set-up and decorate the toy store the day before we opened. As well, a big thank you to Paladin Security for providing a security guard for line-control for the toy store.
Registration dates for 2018 are Wednesday December 5th - Friday December 21st, 2018
Hours of Operation:
Monday to Friday: 9:30 am - 3:30 pm
One Saturday on December 15th: 10:00am - 2:00pm
For more information on how and when to register here.
On Sunday October 7th, we held the 40th Annual Vancouver Motorcycle Christmas Toy Run. We are so proud to have been able to organize this unique event for the past four decades!
Nearly 700 motorcyclists participated in the ride leaving from Coquitlam Centre, travelling through Port Moody, Burnaby and arriving at the PNE Fair grounds in Vancouver.
Although the crowd was not as large as last year due to rainy weather conditions, we are touched to see many familiar faces and such dedicated support at the event.
If you missed the event this year, collectible Toy Run pins and Toy Run T-shirts can be purchased by donation at Trev Deeley Motorcycles.
We would like to send a big thank you to all of our sponsors, participants and volunteers. Thank you for contributing to help make Christmas brighter for kids in need across the lower mainland.
Join us for the 40th Annual Vancouver Motorcycle Christmas Toy Run, on October 7th, 2018, to fundraise for toys to give to kids in need. Entree fee for the Toy Run is a new toy wrapped in plastic. We encourage you to bring toys for kids from 0-18 years of age to donate and no stuffed toys, please.
The Toy Run route starts at Coquitlam Centre, 9:30am, and ride through Coquitlam, Port Moody, Burnaby, and Vancouver and end at the PNE. Participants will receive a commemorative pin in exchange for their donation. We will also be accepting monetary donations at the event.
For any questions please contact us or our event co-organizer BCCOM.
604-580-0111
Help us spread the word and share the event on Facebook.
If you are interested in volunteering at our event please contact info@lmcb.ca.
Every $1 you donate to our charity in June via GivingChallenge.ca counts as a ballot to help us win $10,000 from the GIV3 Foundation. Please donate today - we really appreciate your help!
Just like Santa's workshop we work year-round in preparation to put smiles on kid's faces for the holidays. $10,000 can go towards our work in helping 1000 families with children in need during the holidays. Donate before June 30th.
For full contest rules and regulations, please read the Official Contest Rules
The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau is excited to announce that we have a done an extensive review and refreshed our strategy to ensure best practices are in place to further our mission to empower families in need to create Christmas experiences for their kids through the generosity of community. Our organization values respect for the people we serve, inclusivity for families facing multiple barriers and collaboration with Christmas bureaus and agencies across the Lower Mainland.
Over the past year our volunteer Board of Directors have been working diligently to renew the future plans for the LMCB. We are proud to have a newly defined vision for the work ahead to guide the next five years.
The recurring feedback that we hear from families and supporters is that positive holiday experiences can change lives. Our focus remains dedicated to providing assistance to low-income families with kids from zero to eighteen years of age, because we believe that every family should feel the excitement of giving and receiving holiday gifts.
With this in mind, we are emboldened to develop our role as a regional networker and distributor. The LMCB will continue to build and gather resources to support Christmas bureaus and other agencies, by shipping tens of thousands of toys and gifts for kids every year across the lower mainland and possibly further.
In our local community, we are committed to assisting Vancouver families in need, through our annual Toy Store Program. Families with low-income or are on assistance are welcome to register with us during December. Each qualifying family will receive a grocery store gift card to purchase items for a warm Christmas meal, and Caregivers get to personally shop through our Toy Store to select gifts for each of their kids. We strive to facilitate a process that allows families to experience Christmas with dignity and an opportunity to personalize it with care for their kids.
With energy and enthusiasm, the LMCB is looking forward to strengthening our relationships with our supporters and creating new connections. We are so grateful to our thoughtful and generous donors and volunteers whom allow our work to be possible. Together we can continue a meaningful impact through our combined contributions. We promise to model best practices in how we form community partnerships and how we serve families because we recognize our work is all about the kids.
Thank you for your continued support for eighty-eight years and counting.
By: Angela Lee
On December 6th, the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau opened its doors on another holiday season, welcoming families in need from across Vancouver to register to receive toys and clothes for their children. It was a busy lead-up to our opening day, with truckloads of donated toys arriving daily to our warehouse, and large shipments going out to the Christmas Bureaus in other municipalities across Metro Vancouver. New and returning registration and toy store staff worked like elves to help set up the registration office and toy store.
This year's awesome Toy Store and Registration Team.
The LMCB depends not only on generous donations of toys and clothing to fulfill our mandate, we also rely on dozens of individual and corporate volunteers each year to support our toy drives, help in our warehouse, and serve clients in the toy store. For many years now, Rogers Communications has sent a group of volunteers the day before we open to decorate our toy store with wrapping paper, stuffed animals, ornaments and other items to help make the experience fun and festive.
Rogers Corporate Team
Our 87th year registering families began with frost on the ground and a cool fog in the air. Both new and returning staff and volunteers worked hard to accommodate the many parents and caregivers who arrived early and lined up outside to register. While opening day had its usual (and unusual) bumps along the way, everyone pulled together and stayed in good spirits, and we ended up having one of our busiest opening days on record.
In total, we helped 976 families with children living in Vancouver, giving 2,082 children and 1,348 caregivers gifts and toys, clothes and stocking stuffers, and grocery store gift cards for a Christmas meal. It was a hectic but incredibly rewarding holiday season at the LMCB.
Thank you to our many warehouse and Toy Store volunteers, Paladin Security Vancouver for providing our Toy Store with a security guard, and Paragon Communications for loaning us radios to keep our team communication strong during the registration season.
Last but not least, a heartfelt thank you to our seasonal staff. We had such an amazing team, all of whom assisted our clients with kindness, enthusiasm and compassion. We are excited about 2018 and we wish everyone the very best this year ahead.
By: David Samis
Last night was the annual Teddy Bear Toss. Fans were asked to bring stuffed toys with them to the Vancouver Giants vs. Prince George Cougars game.
The rain of teddy bears began when the Giants scored their first goal. All the stuffed toys collected were donated to the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau to be given to children in need.
We thank the Vancouver Giants for organizing this event and the fans for their support. Thank you to The Gourmet Warehouse and Continental Importers Ltd. for donating the use of their trucks so that we were able to transport the piles of plushy toys back to our warehouse. Our warehouse and boardroom are now filled and we look forward to finding a happy home for them.
Check out some of the highlights in the video below.
By: Angela Lee
Our team always waits with excitement for Santa and Mrs. Claus to arrive at the warehouse in the Reindeer bus. On December 14th, 2017, two bus-loads of toys of nearly 3,000 toys from the Toys were dropped off from the Toys for Tots Toy Drive .
Toys for Tots was created in 1985 by eight BC Transit bus operators. The group wanted to give back to the community during the holidays. The program exceeded expectations and quickly became popular with other operators. From then on, the tradition has carried onto TransLink and its operating companies.
The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau is grateful for the 32nd year of support from the operating divisions of TransLink and its staff in collecting toys across the entire system. The generosity of TransLink over the years has brought smiles to tens of thousands of children in the lower mainland.
Enjoy some of these photos of this year's delivery of toys.
By: Angela Lee
The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau appreciates the kindness and care of students and teachers that share in giving back.
The North Shore News published an article about about students demonstrating service in the community. Students from Seycove Secondary are organizing donations to be dropped off at the Pan Christmas Wish Breakfast as well as activities with preschool kids at Lord Strathcona school and some residents of the Downtown Eastside at a community centre near Oppenheimer Park social justice classes.
Photo from North Shore News. See article here: CRIER COMMENT: Humanitarian holiday
We are always amazed by the enthusiasm students bring in learning how they can make a difference. This season, we have two school groups booked to volunteer in our warehouse.
The first group will be from Prince of Wales Secondary, led by their teacher Ms. Lysanne Mak, have been working on a Christmas Angel project. They set up a Christmas tree in their school with LMCB Angel Tags to encourage students to bring in new gifts for children in need. As an extension of this project, they will also volunteer their time in our warehouse to help us count and sort all the stuffed toys from the Teddy Bear Toss, being held on December 17th, 2017.
The second group will be coming from Matthew McNair Secondary School. Technology Education Teacher, Derek Wong, has reached out to organize a field trip for his students to drop off their hand-crafted wooden toys from their wood-working class. They are excited to donate their toys and items and spend their last day of school before the Winter Break volunteering in our warehouse to sort toys. It will be a fantastic experience for the students to learn more about how their contributions will make a difference to families and children during the holidays.
By: Angela Lee
24 tonnes of toys
Our warehouse is packed with donations from another amazing event! Thank you to the wonderful team at the Pan Pacific Vancouver for hosting another amazing event in support of the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau. We were delighted to be a part of the 30th Annual Pan Pacific Christmas Wish Breakfast, on December 13th.
Hundreds of volunteers from the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services Team and Pan Pacific Hotel donated their time to help make this event a success.
Thousands of attendees, along with corporate groups and companies brought toy donations in exchange for a complimentary hot breakfast. Together, we collected over 24 tonnes of toys and raised over $25,000 in monetary gifts and gift cards. In addition, Dominion Lending Centres' Bike for Kids Program donated 650 new bicycles.
We are thrilled to see such amazing support from everyone. Thank you to everyone's generosity. Here are some highlights from the media:
Global News: Thousands donate toys, gifts in 30th annual Christmas Wish Breakfast
Vancouver Courier: Christmas Wish Breakfast collects 24 tonnes of toys
The Province: Making Wishes Bigger
By: Angela Lee
November has been keeping the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau team busy with the Christmas chaos that we thrive on. From calculating our shipping matrix for the Christmas Bureaus we ship to across the lower mainland, to building the orders and loading them onto giant trucks so that toys can reach the arms of children and spread smiles across their faces.
The LMCB recently shipped our two largest toy orders. We started with Burnaby Community Services, by sending 5,000 toys to support the Burnaby Christmas Bureau. Their Christmas assistance program is already up and running and they offer hampers to seniors and gifts for children to families with low income.
We also sent the largest shipment of toys to date, of the 87 years that we’ve been helping creating Christmas experiences for families in need, to the Surrey Christmas Bureau. We shipped 7,000 toys to their organization! Their truck was bursting with toys, stuffies, decorations, gift wrap, bikes and more.
By early December we will have shipped toys to 15 Christmas bureaus with the possibility of more community agencies to help as the holiday season draws near. Our seasonal staff team has been brought together once again and we look forward to beginning our Christmas assistance registration for low income Vancouver families with children. Our registration runs from December 6th to December 22nd.
By: Angela Lee
The holidays are fast approaching and registration for Christmas assistance for low income Vancouver families will be starting soon.
Here at the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau, our mission is to empower families in need to create Christmas experiences for their kids through the generosity of community. We do that by offering close to about a thousand families every December an opportunity to register with us to receive Christmas support.
Our volunteers and staff will personally handle applications as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to ensure qualifying applicants are included on the recipient list for this upcoming Christmas. We offer a one day registration process, where you can register and receive items right away if you qualify.
Families living outside the Vancouver area should contact their local Christmas Bureau to register as dates and locations vary.
For more information on how to register and what documents to bring with you visit our Registration page.
Please help us spread the word so that we can continue extending our reach in helping families and putting smiles on children's faces!
If you would like to learn more about helping families by donating to the LMCB, please check out our Christmas Wish List.
Happy
Halloween!
We are happy to give Halloween decorations, supplies and costumes to Renfrew Park Community Centre and Mount Pleasant Community Centre yesterday to support their children's programs. Our next load of Halloween goodies will be going to Carnegie Community Centre.
We are confident they are putting these donations to good use and find happy families that will enjoy dressing up their children for some trick or treating fun!
Wishing all the children and families and safe and happy Halloween this year!
By: Angela Lee
Big Bike Donation
Thank you Paladin Security Vancouver!
We are giving a big shout out to Paladin Security in connection with Cadillac Fairview for supporting the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau (LMCB) as their charity of choice.
Frank Naso, from Paladin Security, helped organize a large donation of used bikes, from the unclaimed lost and found department, to be donated the LMCB. Frank also spent this morning personally helping us load these bikes to be transported to our warehouse.
We are excited to an inventory of this large haul! Our next step is to send these lovely bikes to our bike doctor and community partner, Dennis Baker from the Burnaby Lions Club, to be reconditioned.
Thank you to Frank and Paladin Security for their time and generosity! We look forward to finding appreciative homes for these bikes through our partnerships with the Christmas bureaus across the lower mainland.
By: Angela Lee
AGM 2017
The Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau is holding our Annual General Meeting on Wednesday October 25th, 2017, at 7 pm.
Meeting will be at our office on 1870 Pandora Street, Vancouver, BC.
A big THANK YOU goes out to all the wonderful volunteers, sponsors, and participants at this year's 2016 Vancouver Toy Run. They continue to help this annual event be a success. There were approximately 2000 motorcyclist that rode in the parade from Coquitlam Centre to the PNE and $20,000 cash donated to help LMCB continue to support families in the Vancouver area during the Christmas season.
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