Niagara-on-the-Lake’s tractor parade is just under two months away but Dorothy Soo-Wiens has already been working on the details for at least that long.
Emails, text messages and phone calls to NOTL’s farming community went out in early August and special permit applications have been completed and submitted to the Town for review. Her goal is to have 60 brightly decorated tractors work their way through Virgil the evening of December 14.
The parade is just one of the many ways Soo-Wiens contributes to the NOTL community. As the current treasurer for the NOTL Lions Club and an elder at Cornerstone Community Church, Soo-Wiens turns up at events all over town. Whether it’s baking pies, making quilts or feeding farmworkers, Soo-Wiens works tirelessly to make the community a better place.
That dedication to her community is something that was ingrained in her not long after she arrived in Canada from Malaysia as a three-year-old with her parents David and Ivy.
The family home in Fort McMurray, Alberta became a revolving door for other family members immigrating to the country.
“My parents were the first from their families to come to Canada,” Soo-Wiens tells The Local. “They sponsored all my aunts and uncles, their spouses and many of my cousins. Of course, when they came over they all stayed with us for months at a time. My Mom was one of eight kids, and my Dad was one of nine.”
David, who was instrumental in starting the Fort McMurray Chinese Association, worked as an instrument technician for Great Canadian Oil Sands. Ivy, meanwhile, was first a server then a cook in a restaurant. Eventually, Dorothy’s parents bought their own restaurant and, being the oldest of four, she was tasked to mind her younger siblings.
In Grade 6 a friend invited her to attend a youth group meeting at a local Baptist church. Her faith journey began there, and as she grew in her faith she learned of the importance of being kind, of loving her neighbours.
Beginning in junior high school Dorothy brought that philosophy to the yearbook club and the grad committee. She played basketball in high school and contributed to other teams by volunteering to be their manager. She also helped to organize intramural sports.
A young Dorothy Soo left Fort McMurray to study Political Science and Communications at Ottawa’s Carleton University. That’s where she met NOTL native Erwin Wiens.
They married shortly after graduation and when Erwin was hired as an officer with the Peel Regional Police, they moved to Grimsby. The couple inched closer to NOTL, settling in Beamsville, and Erwin caught on with the Hamilton Police. In 2003 they moved back to NOTL with their four daughters, buying their first farm on Line 9 while living on East and West Line.
Dorothy threw herself into farming, running a bed and breakfast at the same time. She soon found herself acting as a surrogate mother to the seasonal workers who would arrive each year to help on the farm. It’s a role she plays to this day.
“One of the guys, Obama (Baraka Allen), has been with us so long,” says Soo-Wiens, “he’s like my son. For all of them, I’m sort of their house mother. They have all become an extension of our family. And we’ve been to Jamaica to meet their families, too.”
As the girls got older, she became involved in their activities. Three of their daughters played in the Niagara Falls Rapids hockey program. Dorothy volunteered as a trainer for a number of their teams and sat on the club’s executive. When they played soccer she volunteered to work the concession stand at Memorial Park. And she also helped coach an NOTL girl’s lacrosse team to an Ontario championship in 2010.
At Cornerstone, Soo-Wiens was part of a group that started the church’s women’s ministry shortly after the family moved to NOTL.
“We help provide food for funerals,” she explains. “I work with the hospitality director, Carole Wiens. We gather a team of volunteers together and put the whole reception on for the families. There’s a real need to help the families who have lost a loved one.”
Then there’s the quilting group she is a part of. They make quilts for the Newark Neighbours Christmas food hampers, and send many to reserves in Northern Ontario through the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). Some have also been sent overseas to Turkey and Ukraine.
“There are about 15 to 20 of us who get together,” says Soo-Wiens. “It’s therapeutic for us. We share health issues, family stuff. We talk, we pray, we give support to each other.”
Each summer she is part of the team that organizes a barbecue for the area’s farm workers. And every May a group of women gather to bake pies to deliver to the New Hamburg Relief Sale. This fall Dorothy teamed with Kathy Dyck to mobilize a baking group that raised $5,200 to contribute to Joe Pillitteri’s Terry Fox fundraising efforts.
Soo-Wiens has been the treasurer for the NOTL Lions Club for more than ten years. She and other Lions members hold an Easter food drive each year. She is involved in the Christmas tree sale that takes place in the Cornerstone Church parking lot every December and helps pack stockings for donations to Newark Neighbours.
And Dorothy has recently joined the board of the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre.
As for the tractor parade, the idea grew from a news report she and Erwin saw on television one evening. The town of Selkirk, Ontario held a tractor parade, and Dorothy was transfixed by the images on screen.
“We had heard there was not going to be a Santa Claus Parade,” she explains. “When I saw that, I knew we had to do it. I called a few farmer friends, and I think that first year (2021) we had about 19 tractors. None of us really knew what we were doing, but it turned out to be spectacular.”
She was adamant that NOTL’s tractor parade take place in Virgil, the epicentre of the town’s farming community. And she insisted that it encompass Pleasant Manor as part of its route.
“I called their recreation director,” says Soo-Wiens. “It’s in the evening, and many seniors don’t like to go out in the dark. So I wanted to bring the parade to them. We’ve heard from many people about how great it is to watch the parade with their mothers from the balcony there.”
2022’s parade more than doubled the number of tractors involved to 39, making Soo-Wiens’ target of 60 this year a reasonable goal. While others pilot a couple of the Wiens family’s machines in the parade, Dorothy and Erwin will be at the Virgil Sports Park organizing all of the entries.
“It brings people so much joy,” says Soo-Wiens.
About her collective volunteer efforts, Dorothy insists none of it would happen without the support of the many people she works with. And she harkens back to those lessons she learned back in Grade 6 when she first attended that youth group meeting.
“It gives me great joy to give back,” she says. “My faith has a lot to do with that. That’s what made this a part of who I am. I believe we all have that responsibility to help our neighbours. I don’t do any of this because I have to. It’s because I want to.”
