Moose Jaw is starting off this holiday season on the right step.

Our local food bank received an unprecedented boost prior to Christmas that will help them fill a huge need in our community. The list of people needing food hampers has grown by 17%, with 46 recent new sign-ups, a drastic jump that has never before been seen by some of the staff at the food bank. Each donation is important to them.

With the recent Good Buy to Hunger Campaign put on by the Co-op, they made it hard for residents not to get involved by creating easy to purchase bags filled with items to be donated to the food bank.

In the end, over 800 bags of donations and over 8000 pounds of food was purchased by residents and local businesses across Moose Jaw. Easily you can tell in the photos there aren't 800 bags, but the Co-op decided to donate flats of food and boxes of items to make it easier on the Moose Jaw and District Food Bank rather than donating separate cans in hundreds of bags.

According to Gabrielle Belanger with CP Rails, our donations surpassed Regina's efforts, and Deann Little, Assistant Manager of the food bank, noticed how large this year's donation was.

"Definitely we received more food this year than we have in the past," Little detailed. "I've been with the food bank for seven years and today['s donation] was definitely more food."

With all the food that had to be transported from the Co-op Grocery Store to the food bank, it took members of the Moose Jaw Fire Department, the staff at the Co-op, and a member from the food bank to load a trailer full of food.

"For everyone to have a nice Christmas is the least we can do really," Fire Fighter Phil Joel said. "It was great to see everyone out and everyone helping, and for sure we like to help with the community as much as we can and it's great to be a help and give back to the community a little bit."

Also, the Canadian Pacific Railway donated $10,000 to the Moose Jaw and District Food Bank as part of their tour across North America.

Since 1999, the Holiday Train has raised more than $14.5 million and 4.3 million pounds of food for North American food banks.