14/11/2025
🌟 Sponsor Spotlight: Proudfoots Home Hardware Building Centre
I am so proud to begin this sponsor spotlight series with a business that has supported family literacy in my life long before this campaign ever existed. Proudfoot’s Home Hardware is locally owned and operated, and they have generously sponsored a Grade 2 class in the 1,000 Books, 50 Classrooms, One Community campaign.
To share these books on behalf of Home Hardware is extra meaningful to me. My dad, Leonard Thompson, worked at Proudfoots for 39 years. Because he worked with a family-friendly, community-minded business, he was home with us every night to read books and tell stories, shaping my love of literacy and inspiring the work I do today.
As I told Jim and Joe yesterday, some of my Dad’s best “Stories by Mouth” were thrilling tall tales about the Home of the Handyman and starred some if his favourite coworkers. In his stories and my imagination, Proudfoots Home Hardware was a place of excitement, teamwork and cooperation, where heroes in red shirts worked together to save the day.
The sign in the photo behind us honours my dad and his 39 years of service, and is only one of many special ways that Proudfoots treated my family like their own. Nova Scotia Bummer is dedicated to my Dad, and now copies of this book will go home with local families so children can share stories with their parents the way I did with mine.
Thank you, Proudfoot’s Home Hardware, for supporting family literacy in Pictou County and for supporting it in my family for so many years. Your generosity helps make this community wish come true.
📚❤️