Four Oakville men are harnessing the power of social media to build a network of local dads who get together on- and off-line to support one another and do good in the community.
Jeremy Sims used his skills as a user experience designer to create the Oakville Dads website in 2018 along with the associated Facebook group. The 47-year-old father of three, started participating with the successful Burlington Dads group when he initially moved to Oakville nine years ago. He eventually met enough Oakville dads, he thought it was time to start an Oakville-based group. He recruited his friend Andrew Rymes, who in turn recruited Jamie Dennison and Per Homer to form the core team that moderates the Facebook group and runs events.
Growth was modest at first, but with everyone locked down in early 2020, their numbers started taking off. “People were looking for ways to socialize and find community,” Homer says. Recently, their numbers ticked past 1.6K members.
The friends share moderating duties with the aim to make the group a safe space to share experiences and seek support. “It seems to be helping a lot of guys,” says Sims. “We’re trying to shed the light on men’s health and maybe get men talking a bit more. We do physical challenges too and try to get dads to be more healthy and active.”
“We wanted to take it beyond just posting funny things and actually meet in person to do things in the community,” Homer adds. “We now have the critical mass to do an open call and have a bunch of guys show up.”
During a heavy snowfall last month, Bronte resident Wendy Perkins noticed snow ploughs had left a large windrow blocking an elderly neighbour’s driveway. Perkins put a call for assistance out on the neighbourhood Facebook group, where Homer noticed it and put a call for assistance out to the Oakville Dads. Two more dads with shovels joined Homer at 8:30 a.m. February 17, making light work of what would otherwise have stranded Netta Duynstee at home for a few days.
“Normally when it’s light snow I can do it myself,” says 88-year-old Duynstee. “This heavy stuff, there’s no way I could manage that. It was very much appreciated. It was a very special day.”
Another time, a member of the group put out a request for help clearing a practice field for his daughter’s soccer team. A couple dads with pickup trucks assembled some snow blowers and got the field cleared together. “Hopefully we can do more of that,” Homer says. “We’re here to support each other and have some fun while we do it.”
The group has also run food drives for the Oakville Fare Share Food Bank’s Thanksgiving and Christmas appeals. “We have raised tens of thousands of dollars worth of food and almost $20,000 in cash for the foodbank through our various efforts,” Homer says. “So much that the Foodbank had to cancel the second weekend of collections at Christmas time as they were overloaded!”
Recently, they raised over $1,000 for the same organization with a whisky tasting event that ran on Zoom February 26. The group assembled close to 40 whisky kits sourced from around the GTA for members to pick up to sip together from their own homes.
The Oakville Dads is always welcoming new members who meet the criteria of being dads who live or work in Oakville, and agree to follow the guidelines.
“It’s cool the cross section of people we got in our group,” Sims says. “We have company CEOs, guys that run their own business, realtors, financial planners, policemen. We get a wide range of people. It’s very gratifying to connect with other local dads and share experiences and challenges, help each other and also help make a positive difference in our communities.”
