1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Easter Seals bring hope to children with disabilities

MARCH 16, 1951—More than two million Easter Seals were mailed out to Manitoba residents early in March, when the Kinsmen Clubs of Manitoba launched their annual Easter Seals Campaign in support of the Society for Crippled Children. (Later renamed the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities and now known as Manitoba Possible).

The Kinsmen Club of Winnipeg held the first Manitoba Easter Seals sale as part of a national Kinsmen fundraising campaign in 1949. In 1950, other Manitoba Kinsmen clubs joined in the campaign, which led to the formation of the Society for Crippled Children.

The 1951 drive for funds was the third Easter Seals Campaign, with all 15 Manitoba Kinsmen Clubs participating, including the new Steinbach Kinsmen Club, which had just received its charter in February.

Since the society began functioning a few short months earlier, 85 cases had been dealt with. Some children needed and received orthopaedic appliances; others had operations, and others received special training provided in such centres as the Nursery Treatment Centre for Cerebral Palsy at Children’s Hospital and the Paraplegic Training Centre at Deer Lodge Hospital, according to the Winnipeg Kinsmen Club’s Easter Seals fundraising chairman.

“But we have barely begun our job of helping handicapped youngsters. The names of nearly 2,300 (children with disabilities) in the province have been identified and new cases are coming to light every day.”

Easter Seals proceeds will be used to provide necessary medical services for any person in Manitoba who is under 21 years of age and is restricted in normal muscular movement by reason of disease, birth defect or accident, covering such conditions as post-poliomyelitis, cerebral palsy, congenital defects and paraplegics.

The Steinbach Kinsmen Club, sponsored by the St Boniface-Norwood Kinsmen Club, was officially launched Feb. 28, when District Governor Earl Riddell of Port Arthur, Ont. presented a framed charter to the local group.

While the 1951 Easter Seals campaign was the first official national fundraiser for the Steinbach Kinsmen, members went to work in their own community in December of 1950, making Christmas a little brighter for Steinbach’s needy, raising enough money in donations to its “Empty Stocking Fund” to provide toys for 100 hampers.

Promoting that first Kinsmen fundraising effort The Carillon urged readers to “Help Kinsmen Help Kiddies.”