Cookies honour veterans, support seniors at Deer Lodge Centre

You can help veterans and other seniors just by eating a cookie.

For a limited time, the High Tea Bakery, at 2103 Portage Ave., is baking Remembrance Day-themed sugar cookies as a fundraiser.

Owner Belinda Bigold, who opened the bakery with her mother in 2003, said they came up with the sweet honour for Canadian veterans of past wars and conflicts a decade ago.

“It has been at least 10 years we’ve been doing this,” Bigold said Wednesday.

The cookies, “made with lots of butter with royal icing on top,” come in several shapes, including a plane, an ambulance and a cross.

Bigold said she sells them for $4 apiece and a portion of the sales goes to the Deer Lodge Centre Foundation.

“We’ve probably given thousands of dollars,” Bigold said. “Some years it is $500.”

She said they used to bake cookies in the shape of poppies, but someone from the Royal Canadian Legion told them it was disrespectful and violated the organization’s copyright.

Bigold said family members of veterans often stop in to pick up treats before a visit at the Deer Lodge Centre across the street.

Tony Mariani, a spokesperson for the Deer Lodge Centre Foundation, said the bakery’s cookie philanthropy is much appreciated.

“There’s never a gift that is too large or too small,” Mariani said. “When people give it helps the great care people get at Deer Lodge.”

Mariani said past cookie sales have not only helped buy equipment needed by veterans and seniors at the facility, they contributed to the soon to be unveiled $1.5-million interior courtyard renovation.

“People might not know this is the third-largest health centre in the province,” he said. “We have 419 beds and still have a dozen veterans here. It’s the largest rehabilitation centre in the province.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca