It was a beautiful day for 18 holes at Summerside Golf and Country Club.  I’d managed to slip onto the course with a fast friend named Scott Springer, his buddy, and a solo interloper with a bucket hat and a beard that would have made Grizzly Adams beam.

I’m always the chatty kind so I struck up a conservation with the fellow duffer as we tarried through the Prince Edward Island heather, looking for wayward golf balls. I was amazed to learn from the old timer that he, like me, came from an island. Fogo Island. He was a lifer and an artist there, among other things.

We dined on the delicious irony the he, an islander from the northeast coast of Newfoundland, and me, an islander from Lady Lake O, were together here, whacking golf balls on an island in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.

I can’t recall the exact details of our conversation that day, but I do remember that once we had learned each other’s place of residence, there was an easiness to our walk over the remaining round. There’s something about a shared experience of living on windswept shorelines in heavy weather that helps to sniff out the mainlanders.

He told me about the artists on Fogo who had been honing their various crafts for decades, and the special bond forged amongst those who sculpt, or hold a brush, or turn wood. And how, in turn, that closeness rested on that of  Fogo islanders generally:  a special feeling of togetherness bound them together. “Ta one hand always warshed ta other.” Everyone in a close-knit living situation pulls in the same direction. How when a person, or a family, hit hard times, it took only a phone call, or a conversation down at the rink, or in the diner, and help was on the way. “Nuttin’ to be too proud over, just a helpin’ hand.”

I was only deciphering two out of every three or four words but I was picking up what he was laying down about a community that cared about each other’s wellbeing. He was proud of his people and they way they took care of their own. “Sounds a lot like Prince Edward County,” I said.

I never did learn his name. I’m sure he told me twice but through the accent I just nodded, smiled, and said ‘Sounds good, pal!”

But I think of him and Fogo every once in a while when our community offers another example of how blessed we are to share that cohesiveness in Prince Edward County. That spirit of togetherness and helping your neighbour stretches back to the days of the Loyalist settlers. It has been baked into the local genealogy by the high summer sun and then driven into place by the wicked winter winds.

Those cold winds are due to start blowing again soon. Winter reveals those around us who make life better for everyone.

Take the Angel Tree Christmas sharing program. Community organizers Phil St. Jean and Julie Miller, along with Giant Tiger owner Jennifer Ginger, are working behind the scenes to keep it running this year. An announcement will soon be made that the program is back for another year. I say this with confidence. And then there will be a rush for volunteers and donations. And they will step up. I know that too. Intake has always started the day after Remembrance Day. It will this year too.

In addition to Christmas gifts, the Angel Tree program help families needing winter wear as well as holiday food hampers.

When it comes to warm winter clothing, there’s also the regional Keep Kids Warm Campaign, operated through police services in the Quinte region. In Prince Edward County, this program has a strong local tie-in that involves several organizations and businesses. The Prince Edward Memorial Hospital Craft Auxiliary has a tradition of making knitted items, around 150 pairs of hats and mittens, for low income and working families with children up to 12 years of age.

Picton’s Salvation Army, the Picton United Church Food Bank and Wellington’s Storehouse Food Bank are already starting to prepare their Christmas food hamper and holiday appeal programs. Food drives organized by youth collectives, the annual Christmas Kettle Campaign, the beloved County tradition of raffle tickets, and “donations at the door” at holiday concerts and musical programmes will soon be upon us. By way of muscle memory, we will show up, dig deep into our pockets, reach way into the pantry and flip a few bills into the kettle. Because that’s what we do here.

Prince Edward County clearly has been and will continue to be a community that cares and it’s my hope this message serves as gentle reminder that the most difficult of all seasons is approaching quickly. It’s hackneyed to say but the need has never been greater.

We all know this community will band together and prove once again that hearts are true here. We are a community that shrugs its collective shoulders at seemingly insurmountable odds and, by God, gets things done.

A place where one hand washes the other. Where there’s nothing to get too proud over. It’s just a helping hand.