His eyes don’t sparkle.

They burn with soft inner light that cuts through the cloak of ones sense of self.

He sees who you are.

He doesn’t judge.

He has lots to share, but rarely about himself.

Because Tom Jackson is all about others.

All about helping, providing, facilitating, making connections, doing, raising awareness, raising money.

As my late father would have said: “Putting his money where his mouth is.”

Tom’s latest Canadian coast-to-coast adventure is called ‘Santa’s Crazy Sox Box’.

Having once lived on the streets himself, and subsequently working with the homeless for forty years, he knows socks save lives.

The campaign’s slogan is simple. True. Profound.

“Warm hearts, warm feet save lives.”

If your feet are cold and wet in the deep freeze of a Canadian winter, there’s one thing  that can alleviate the excruciating pain. And it’s not a hot bowl of soup, or a lean-to under a bridge, or even jamming those cold wet feet into a pair of boots.

It’s a pair of warm, dry socks.

In Nova Scotia, Tom has partnered with  Souls Harbour Rescue Mission.

The mission? Donate a pair of new socks. It’s not a big ask.

And it can be done in every office, school, hospital, restaurant, retail facility, the sky’s the limit.

Get a good-sized box. Have your colleagues, friends, customers buy pairs of warm new socks and fill the box. Deliver to a local Souls Harbour Rescue Mission. Or a favourite social services agency of your choice. Easy Peezy.

But this incentive is merely a tiny twinkling light on Tom and Alison Jackson’s tree of many lights. And even though I didn’t meet his wife, Alison, on this first day, I have since. And they do so much for the good of others. Together.

They take what people no longer need and find new homes for those things—like books from universities which they arranged to have shipped to Ethiopia.

Tom writes/arranges/produces/participates in musical shows, like the Huron Carole, with the proceeds going to charity.

Tom and Alison raise millions of dollars for charities, relief associations, and organizations in need of help, like (this year) the volunteer fire fighters in St. John’s, Newfoundland. And the Red Cross.

Tom has a foundation with Charitable Impact called ‘The Hope Fund.’ And he founded the ‘Christmas and Winter Relief Association’ in 1989.

And so many more than merely one or two afternoons would allow me to discover.

I wondered how did this start for Tom, where did his desire to help others come from? Was this before he met Alison?

Tom told me that in 1986 he was living on the streets in downtown Toronto.

Life was bleak.

Addicted to drugs, living in a crawl space, he had a visitor who said: “I’m going to help you, if you help me. I’m going to send you an angel and the angel will be worse off than you. If you help the angel, I’ll help you.”

Tom said shortly after that, he came upon a man who was dying.

Tom helped the man and brought the man back to hope and light.

And from that moment on Tom’s life was changed. He became addicted to that feeling. The inner knowing that no matter how much or how little one had to give, one could always give something to those in need. It permeated his heart, his soul, his essence, this feeling of helping others. And he hasn’t looked back.

“I was born on the back of a horsedrawn buckboard between the One Arrow Reserve and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and weighed twenty-two ounces. I didn’t have a hope in hell,” he said.

His creator clearly took exception to that.

Because Tom Jackson, a strong, creative, resilient, First Nations man, and his successful and hugely supportive wife, have done more for humanity than most people can even fathom.

They have been celebrated.

Tom wears the Companion of the Order of Canada pin—the highest designation in the order of which there are only 165 living members—discretely on the collar of his vest above an embroidered logo of one of his many creations “The Huron Carole.”

But in my opinion, they’ve not been celebrated enough.

And if I were to say Tom is a wealth of knowledge about all things First Nations, that would be untrue. He is and has so much more than a wealth of knowledge. He is knowledge itself. So much information. So much pain. So much gravitas.

And yet he forgives.

He forgives the brutality of our cruel white ancestors who decimated his.

How does he do this?

“We have our truth,” he says. “Do you know what reconciliation is?”

I shake my head.

“Love. Love. The verb,” he replies.

He lives that love every day, for many reasons, but especially for his wife.

Because threaded through all of Tom’s stories is the gentle presence of his beautiful and beloved Alison. It is clear she graces his every thought, every carefully worded sentence. For all the twinkling lights on Tom’s tree, Alison is clearly the star at the top.

Who is Tom Jackson?

A humanitarian. A philanthropist. A writer. An actor. A facilitator. An extraordinary human being.

And so much more.

Of all the people I have met in my life, it has been my greatest honour to have met Tom Jackson.

And now, Alison. Thank you both for that honour.