VICTORIA — Amelia Morrison’s walk around the neighbourhood began by being ordinary, until she found something extraordinary. “I thought it was so sweet,” Amelia recalls after finding a tiny toy duck. She assumed it must be lost, so she left it to be found, and the next day discovered it gone. Amelia though the duck must have been reunited with its owner, until she found another one, and suspected they were being placed around the neighbourhood on purpose for kids to pick up. So, she took the duck and gave it her daughter Apolline. “It thought it was really cool,” the now eight-year-old smiles. Then Amelia invited Apolline to go searching for more. “We’d look up high, down low,” Apolline says they would look for little ducks everywhere they’d go. “And then, my mom, she’s like, ‘Stop! Wait! Look!,” Apolline laughs. “And I’m like, ‘Wait? What? What’s happening?!” Amelia had spotted something peering out of a hole in a tree trunk, and Apolline found it was another little animal toy. “I thought it was amazing,” Apolline smiles. But who had hidden them all was a mystery. “Actually, I’m the one who hides them around,” Christy Soffe admits during a break from placing the tiny ducks around a local park. Christy says that over the past year she’s either hidden, or handed out, more than 700 of them. “The world’s kind of a miserable place right now,” Christy smiles. “So, I just want to make people’s day better.” Instead of feeling overwhelmed by everything going wrong, Christy decided to get out and try and do something right. “I just spread a little bit of joy around,” Christy smiles before returning to placing the little animals on park benches or offering them the strangers she passes. “That’s what I call my ducks, a little bit of joy.” Joy that’s taken flight and inspired Apolline to keep just one of the ducks she found and pay the rest forward by re-hiding them. “I like sharing,” Apolline smiles. “It just makes me feel happy.” And once you start sharing joy, Christy and Apolline have learned, you just might find you take to it like a duck to water “Be kind to one another,” Christy smiles. “And remember the world is a better place with you in it.”
