The fire held the room in its glow, flames breathing against old stone with quiet, deliberate patience. Woodsmoke rose and softened into the sweetness of Christmas baking, sugar and spice lingering like memories. Decorations caught the light in small, deliberate flashes—evergreen, glass, and time itself—while gentle conversations drifted, thoughtful and unforced.

The warmth settled deeper than comfort. It carried reflection, gratitude, and a hard-won calm. Beneath the ritual of the season, hope gathered—profound and steady, shaped by everything that had been carried through the year just passed. Not hope for a single morning, but for the long stretch ahead: a belief in resilience, in quiet progress, and in light that does not rush, but endures.

The words Christmas Eve rolls off our tongues, like Grandma’s whipped shortbread.

This is the hour when defenses are lowered without negotiation. Memory circulates freely through firelight—faces indelibly loved, voices partially recalled, hands once held and never entirely released. Joy arrives tempered by tears. Longing remains, having decided it no longer needs to explain itself. Even grief, disarmed by warmth, is granted a seat nearby.

For families sustained by the David Foster Foundation’s quiet but formidable work, this evening possesses a particular luminosity—both earthly and elevated. Each flame rises like an answered petition. Each spark gestures toward a future secured not by chance, but by resolve. Each ember pulses with the steady defiance of hearts unwilling to yield to the harsher verdicts of circumstance.

Fire, in its elemental intelligence, is impartial. It extends its aureate beneficence without qualification—offering what remains one of the rarest virtues in public life: generosity unencumbered by calculation.

And so, we gather. We endure. We keep watch. For Christmas Eve, like the fire itself, confirms a truth neither sentimental nor negotiable—that light, however constrained, will always find its way through darkness.

Now consider another reality.

A child, your child—is slipping through time’s grasp, their life dependent upon an organ they do not possess. You are in a small centre- distant from intervention. The nearest hospital capable of saving them lies eight hours away—eight hours measured not in distance, but in heartbeats. The clock does not pause; it advances with predatory indifference. Each second lands with cumulative force. We recognize anxiety in trivial inconvenience. Here, the stakes admit no metaphor.

Yet this ordeal can be transformed—because earlier this month, a new joint program was established.

On Christmas Eve—that singular pause in the civic and moral calendar—sentiment briefly yields to responsibility. Society recalls what it owes to those least capable of advocating for themselves. It is within this atmosphere, equal parts reverence and resolve, that the partnership between the David Foster Foundation and the Air Canada Foundation reveals its full significance.

Donated Aeroplan points are not symbolic gestures; they are operational instruments—converting accumulated advantage into immediate survival.

Christmas Eve has always been associated with journeys undertaken in uncertainty and sustained by faith. This initiative represents a contemporary, rigorously practical continuation of that tradition. It unites the moral act of organ donation with the logistical reality required to honour it—ensuring that generosity is not nullified by geography, delay, or cost.

To support this program—by donating points or lending one’s voice—is not seasonal charity. It is the exercise of responsible citizenship. It affirms that prosperity, when competently stewarded, entails obligations extending beyond personal comfort. In such actions, undertaken without exhibition, the authentic gravity of the season is preserved.

And so, as Christmas Eve descends into its final hours—when the fire subsides into embers and the world appears briefly suspended, there remains space for a quieter, more consequential generosity. Many of us sit surrounded by comforts accumulated over time: miles gathered through work, duty, and deferred ambition. On this night, it is reasonable to ask what those miles might become if released from their dormancy.

Christmas Eve has never demanded extravagance. It has always required attention.

To donate is merely to recognize—and to act.

Donate Aeroplan points now: https://donatepoints.aircanada.com/charity/5