WHITEHORSE — A familiar, if somewhat unconventional, holiday event resumes for its 27th season in Whitehorse but the man who's better known as Garbage Truck Santa worries he's celebrating on borrowed time.
Semi-retired sanitation worker Wayne Henderson has decorated an old packer-style garbage truck with thousands of Christmas lights and has plans to drive it around Whitehorse spreading joy and handing out candy canes.
The rolling ritual was inspired in 1991 when Henderson was regularly greeted on his rounds by a youngster who delighted in the arrival of his truck.
He has decorated a garbage truck every year since then, visiting daycares, schools and seniors centres, even keeping the tradition alive after 2012 by borrowing an old packer truck from a local trailer park when newly purchased city trucks could not be decorated.
But Henderson says he's been told the trailer park and the truck could be sold in the next year so he's mulling a fundraising campaign to buy the old rig.
He says he'd like to hit the 30-year milestone and then hand the annual tradition over to his son.