We, in Canada, are fortunate to have volunteers for so many important jobs in our society.
These people are invaluable contributions in many fields and without them many of us would feel a void and loss of public services.
These people are the 'invisable' and unpaid force behind filling in the cracks where social assistance stops.
There are mothers who help organize school field trips.
There are men and woman who organize fund raisers for various causes.
The are Big Brothers and Big Sisters who help kids in single family parent families.
There are volunteers in the hospitals who are there for the patients when the nurses are too busy.
The list goes on and on.
Without these volunteers many of us would be unable to struggle through our misfortunes alone and the cost of their services would be so prohibitive that we would be unable to utilize them even if they were available.
A Statistics Canada survey a few years ago (and I'm sure that the numbers have increased since then!)showed that 2.7 million persons worked 374 million hours of volunteer, unpaid service.
If these people had been receiving Canada's minimum wage at that time, the payment would have been close to 12 million dollars! And, this would have come directly out of the taxpayers pockets.
Perhaps the next time you see or know a volunteer, you could give them a personal 'thank you' for all the time that is so unselfishly given.

Party on xxx