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A group of parents are saying thank you to nine day-care workers who spent six weeks caring for their youngsters without pay.
The employees at Les Petits Marins, a francophone day-care centre attached to Saint-François Xavier school, are now out of work.
The not-for-profit centre, which opened in 1996, closed it doors on Nov. 30 with a $30,000 deficit.
Six weeks earlier, staff contacted centre president Guy Titley about cheques bouncing.
They were told the accounts had been frozen and the Conseil Scolaire de District des Ecoles Catholiques du Sud-Ouest was attempting to work out a payment plan with Revenue Canada, said day care supervisor Maureen Rumford.
Facing an indeterminate period without pay, staff made a selfless decision.
"We had a staff meeting and we decided that our parents and our children were more important, and we decided to stay right until the end," said Rumford, who spent 15 years with the organization.
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The day care looked after 38 children, among them Olivia Vignon.
The 17-month-old arrived in September, after her mother Lesley, a 35-year-old legal assistant, spent the summer relying on a cousin to care for her daughter. Her husband works as an instrumentation technician.
"There's not many day cares that have infant rooms, so there's a high demand for the age range for anything 18 months and younger," Vignon said.
She been able to find alternate care with La Ribambelle at Saint-Thomas d'Aquin school. But she's very grateful for what staff at Les Petits Marins did.
"It was my child they were taking care of and not getting paid for," she said. "How many of us would actually go to work without receiving paycheques?"
-reprinted from the Oberver