The Guelph Mercury, 2/11/2009

The little old lady was in distress, and we, such good Canadian lads, were going to help her.

She was a sad sight — all 90 pounds of her, trying to push a massive white yacht of a car up an icy hill in downtown Kitchener. Her 1970s ride, not in a co-operating mood, was the type you’d see on a Columbo episode. It should have been retired around the same time the show went off the air.

I and another passerby threw our backs into pushing the dead car, as the lady rode in the driver’s seat. While we froze in the -15 C chill, she shouted encouragement out the window along the lines of “You call yourselves gentlemen?” and “Do I have to push it myself?”

Not exactly the words of a grateful person, but we pushed on, huffing and puffing. Where, precisely, did she aim to take the car, we asked?

“Someone stole it from me, so I stole it back,” she declared. “I took it from the police station.”

Oh. Turns out she had pushed the car all the way from the local constabulary parking lot, about four blocks. And, it also turns out, she was quite drunk, despite her protests: “I’m not drunk!” she roared, adding a few choice expletives. “I’m just angry.” Case closed.

Sometimes doing the right thing goes wrong. Sometimes you try to help a little old lady and wind up an accessory to auto theft, aiding and abetting an impaired driver moving stolen property through city streets.

But I couldn’t help it. I’m from Guelph — Canada’s most caring city, according to The Canadian Council on Learning. Almost 70 per cent of us have done some volunteer work in the past year. Not sure if my assisted auto theft counts. And we don’t ask for a tax receipt, although there are those who think Canada’s volunteers should get the same breaks at tax time as financial donors do.

It’s fashionable to moan that the modern world suffers from an empathy deficit. We don’t care enough about one another, we’re told. We’ve lost the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, they say. Even U.S. President Barack Obama says it, so it must be true. Not in Guelph, right?

Problem is, some people think that way. The warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with the “most caring community” label is a double-edged sword, says Cathy Taylor, executive director of the Volunteer Centre of Guelph-Wellington.

The danger is that Guelphites will assume there’s no need for them to help out because someone else is already doing it, she said.

That’s the last thing you want in this economic downturn, when calls to the centre’s community information line are spiking — demand on food banks are up, the need for emergency hampers growing, and more families are losing breadwinners.

If there’s a plus side to the recent layoffs, it’s that there has been an increase in the number of people signing up to volunteer, Taylor said.

Though we already volunteer more than any other city, there’s still work to be done.

“It’s still not enough. We could use 1,000 volunteers right now,” Taylor said.

People are needed as coaches for minor league sports and as weekend helpers at the food bank. They’re needed as Snow Angels — a new program that gets volunteers to clear away the walls of snow left at the end of seniors’ driveways by city plows. While a few dozen volunteers have signed on since the project started at the end of last month, the centre expects they could need an army of 200 or 300 shovellers by next winter.

So get out there and help. But if you see any old ladies pushing cars down the street, just ask a few questions first.