412 acts of kindness for our Hospital Heroes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/12/2021 (1428 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We launched this column earlier this year, along with another feature we call Local Heroes, as a way of shining light on the little things people do with and for each other that sometimes go unnoticed or unheralded.

The response of our readers has been tremendous. I have received many more emails and messages than I ever thought I would, and certainly more than I’ve been able to mention in this space.

When my thoughts turned to putting together a year-end column, I hoped to find a story that encapsulated the sentiment we have been trying to encourage — which is the idea that it doesn’t take much to make someone’s day by showing them a kindness, nor does it take much to say thank you.

I think I found that story when I opened an email from Melissa Larkin, who tells us how her young daughter Brooklyn has been moved to act in the spirit of kindness.

I’m going to turn this column over to Melissa now (her story has been edited for length and clarity), but not before saying thank you to her and Brooklyn for sharing.

☐ ☐ ☐

Melissa writes:

My now six-year-old daughter Brooklyn started her very first year of school in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic.   

Because the kids had to wear masks and could not see who all their friends were, Brooklyn’s teachers asked each child to submit a photo of themselves along with one word they would use to describe themselves.  Brooklyn chose to describe herself as ‘kind’.

During her time in kindergarten, Brooklyn was introduced to a book by her amazing teachers that, I can only hope, has helped to shape a part of who she will become. It was about filling people’s invisible buckets with kindness, and the things we can do to pass kindness along to others.  

As Brooklyn told her great aunt Lori about this book, a discussion about random acts of kindness arose. Lori bought Brooklyn a copy of the book, and it was part of our bedtime reading routine for many weeks. Lori then started to talk with Brooklyn about ‘kindness rocks’ — the concept of hiding painted rocks of all shapes, colours and sizes around the city in the hope of filling the invisible bucket of anyone who finds one by bringing a smile to their face with the beautiful design, the bright colours or the positive message written on it.  

In the spring of 2021, Lori decided we should go on a ‘kindness adventure’, and asked us to paint a few rocks to hide around Grant’s Old Mill and Assiniboine Park.  

Brooklyn thought that we should make a few special rocks to hide closer to the hospital for the “hospital heroes” to find. We painted five rocks to look like the faces of health-care workers wearing masks, and hid them around a picnic bench close to the Grace Hospital parking lot, along with some other kindness rocks we hid around the rest of the park.

The following day, Brooklyn asked to go back to the park to see if her Hospital Hero rocks were still there. We soon realized they had been found but Brooklyn began to cry when she noticed we had hidden the rocks further from the hospital than she initially thought. She was worried they may have been found by people who didn’t work at the hospital and said that we should have put them in a basket and taken them right to the hospital.

Then she asked if we could make more.

Over the summer of 2021, we spent our spare time making Hospital Hero rocks of all kinds. We collected rocks while we were out walking, on our beach vacations, and from the yards of close friends and family.  As we started to paint these tiny messages of gratitude, we got to 50 completed rocks and decided to keep going… 75, 150, 300.

We made a grand total of 412 Hospital Hero rocks and Brooklyn decided that she wanted them to be gifted to the heroes at Grace Hospital and the St. Boniface Hospital, as the Grace is where both her parents were born and St. Boniface helped save the lives of two very important people in her life — her dad and her great aunt Lori.

We had a fun time making the rocks and challenging ourselves to find new ideas. This also inspired many conversations with others about random acts of kindness, kindness rocks and kindness rock gardens.

We filled two buckets with 206 Hospital Hero rocks each in the hope of filling the invisible buckets of 412 of our local Hospital Heroes.  

We delivered the Hero rocks to both hospitals on Nov. 12 (in honour of World Kindness Day on Nov. 13) and our gifts were graciously received.

Owing to current health protocols, we were unable to see the Hospital Heroes pick rocks that they connected with, but we hope these tiny painted rocks brought smiles to their faces and passed along a message of appreciation for all they do.

Tell us about Random Acts of Kindness you’ve witnessed or experienced by sending an email to news@canstarnews.com