Inner-city schools treated to Christmas lunch at downtown Regina hotel

There’s a little over a week until Christmas day, but some kids from Regina’s inner city had the chance to celebrate a little early on Wednesday.

Approximately 700 kids from Sacred Heart and Albert Community Schools were bused to the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel downtown for a Christmas luncheon. Regina police officers, firefighters, STARS Air Ambulance pilots, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Pats players all helped serve turkey and ice cream to the kids.

The kids filed into the hotel’s ballroom past their servers who were lined up to greet them, some getting high-fives from the kids.

Ian McKillop is the principal of Albert Community School. He called the lunch a fantastic event, saying the kids look forward to it every year.

“The kids are always excited to come to this event. It’s wonderful to load up the buses with all of our children and bring them here for this experience.”

McKillop said it’s good to be able to make all the children feel valued.

“They come from a neighbourhood that’s facing some more challenges, so it’s nice that we can, as a community, pull together and provide them with an opportunity that they might not otherwise have had.”

Along with the police officers who were helping to serve the kids their food, there were students from Sask Polytechnic’s pre-policing program helping out.

Jim Pratt is the facilitator for that program. He said he brings the students so they can mingle with the community.

“It’s all part of community policing – getting to know our community better and getting to know some of our duties, assisting all our various community partners.”

There were some special guest for the kids as well including the Pats’ mascot, K-9, and Santa. But when Queen Elsa and Olaf from Frozen came into the room singing, they blew everyone else out of the water.