Photo credit: East Side Neighborhood Services.
This evening, I took the kids to see the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train as it made a stop in Northeast Minneapolis, a neighborhood in which the railroad has a large footprint, in the 260-acre Shoreham Yard site just west of Central Avenue. The stop was at Lions’ Park, a small triangle at 37th Avenue and Stinson Boulevard, near the confluence of Minneapolis, Columbia Heights, and St. Anthony Village.
The train is brightly decorated with lights, and after it pulls into the stop, a stage opens from the side of one of the cars for a 30 minute concert to a lively crowd braving the 5° F cold.
At this stop, the concert featured country singers Meghan Patrick and Kelly Prescott, and Canadian soul and R&B singer Tanika Charles.
The three were backed up by a versatile band that seemed to be at home with the different genres, and the three artists did a few numbers together. Prescott commented that she had seen the Holiday Train as a youth as it passed through her hometown, and that she had come full circle by being able to be on the boxcar stage herself.
Each stop is a benefit for a local food shelf, and at this stop, the railroad made a $15,000 donation to East Side Neighborhood Services, a social service charity rooted in my old neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis, and serving clients there and elsewhere in Hennepin County. Donations from the event were earmarked to their food programs, which concentrate on helping senior citizens and residents of high rise low-income housing. Other stops of the CP Holiday Train benefit similar food banks in the cities the train visits in the U.S. and Canada.
Canadian Pacific actually has two holiday trains, with stops in Quebec, New York, Ontario, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Even though the two trains are halfway through their trek across the continent, there are still stops coming up in Minnesota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
If you live in one of the states or provinces where the Holiday Train is still coming, I encourage you to attend and support your local food shelf. We brought along the proverbial non-perishable food item to donate, but forgot it in the car. So when we got home, we went to the East Side Neighborhood Services website and made a monetary donation. If you don’t know of a local food charity in your community for such a donation (or in addition to it), we encourage you to do the same.
Photo credit: Canadian Pacific.