It was a community effort in Point Edward, where Bridgeview Public School challenged the local fire department to collect cereal for the Inn of the Good Shepherd.
The non-profit organization expanded its annual Cereal Dom-INN-Os challenge this year to include workplaces and local groups.
Bridgeview Principal Tabetha Core said the friendly competition between the school and the Point Edward Fire Department ended in "a close race" with 983 boxes collected in total.
"It's shocked me how supportive the community is to the school, to the fire department," Core said. "It's all hands on deck."
Deputy Fire Chief Rick MacGregor said their members (29 volunteers and two full-time staff) and residents "really stepped up for this event."
"At the end of the day, the Inn of the Good Shepherd is going to be the winner. We wanted to have a little bit of fun with the kids. We wrote them some fictitious reports saying they were in violation of certain cereal codes," joked MacGregor. "The school bantered back and forth with us."
MacGregor said the fire department is willing to have a rematch with the school next year.
Members of the fire department attended the school on Thursday to help students line the cereal boxes in the hallways so they would fall like dominoes.
Students also had a special visit from Sparky the Fire Dog.
Inn of the Good Shepherd Program Manager Adrienne McPhee said opening the food drive to the community, and not just elementary schools, has turned out to be a great idea.
"The response has been really amazing! We're just excited we made this change. It's obviously a really positive change, and it's bringing in tons of cereal for the food bank," McPhee said. "We have 18 groups already signed up. We've only collected about half of those groups so far, and we already have over 1,400 boxes of cereal for the food bank."
She said Bridgeview was the only school to challenge a local fire department for the event.
There was no goal for this year. In 2022, McPhee said the food drive brought in over 4,000 boxes of cereal, and they've been trying to match or exceed that every year since.
"Cereal is really hard to keep on our shelves, it's also something we've seen the price increase of over the years as the cost of living goes up," McPhee said. This will keep us stocked for months to come."
With more boxes to be collected as of Thursday afternoon, McPhee estimated there could be enough cereal to keep the food bank stocked until the end of the year.
