A little boy's belief in the magic of Christmas was strengthened after he spotted Santa getting his cookie fix at a Tim Hortons thousands of kilometres south of the North Pole.
The boy, who was about four years old, believed he recognized a man with a white beard at a Tim Hortons in Fergus, Ont. The small Ontario town is approximately 106 kilometres west of Toronto, and more than 4,600 kilometres from the North Pole.
The boy spotted the man and looked at him "in awe," Mark Hurson wrote in a Facebook post, confirmed by the franchise to CTVNews.ca. Hurson said that he witnessed the encounter while visiting the restaurant on Nov. 16.
The bearded man looked down at the boy and smiled, then asked if he'd sent his letter to Santa yet. Hurson said the boy had not, but told the stranger he'd be writing it that night.
The man told the boy, "You better be nice to your mom and sister because I'm watching," Hurson wrote in a post that has been shared more than 18,600 times.
"He then said goodbye and (that he) was going back to the North Pole to finish the toys with the elves."
The man is a regular customer in Fergus, an employee told CTVNews.ca, but the boy was the first person to call him Santa.
Several people who had witnessed the incident were teary-eyed as the man walked out of the store, Hurson wrote.
"There are some great people left in the world."
