Spruce Grove business making wishes come true with window campaign

A Spruce Grove business is changing lives this Christmas with its window campaign.

Once you step inside Brickhouse Smokery in Spruce Grove, you can choose a photo from the window and read the print on the back. It’s a wish made by someone in the community.

“Customers can just come in and choose a story that relates to them, that they feel in their heart,” said Amanda Wilhauk, co-owner of Brickhouse Smokery.

The campaign is part of Trevor and Amanda Wilhauk’s 12 Days of Giving.

Each year, coinciding with their business anniversary, they spend the first 12 days of December giving back, whether that’s meals for their local police force, buying a stranger a coffee, or helping a grandfather provide Christmas for the grandson he has custody of while his wife is in palliative care.

“There’s so many people in our community that want to help, they don’t always know where to go to offer that help. So, it’s giving them a face, it’s giving them a story,” said Wilhauk.

Wilhauk says some of the wishes are simple: a little girl who would like a hairbrush, or a mom who can’t afford the unicorn stuffies her children wants for Christmas.

However, some of the wishes are life-altering, like the 12-year-old boy who has never been to school in the country he’s from, where disabled children are not allowed to attend school.

His sibling was asked by teachers about their home life, and when it was revealed that the boy had never been to school, the school invited the mom and boy in.

“So they brought him into the school, and they met him, but he was in a toddler’s stroller. Not a wheelchair. And so, they discovered that he needs a special wheelchair, like a motorized one, and there’s no way this family could afford that. It was a $10,000 purchase. So, we put it up on the window thinking, no way is this going to get grabbed. Who can afford a $10,000 wheelchair, like this is a big ask, but we’re going to put it up. Well, a couple walked in, and they literally went like, boom, this one. And it was so amazing. They literally changed that young man’s life. He can now learn. He’s super smart, he’s just trapped in a body that doesn’t work. And so now he gets to go to school every day, and he will get a full education,” said Wilhauk.

That couple, who adopted a wish and changed a 12-year-old’s life, didn’t stop there.

“They chose to pay for a funeral of a 24-year-old young man that had passed, and the family could not afford a memorial of any kind. And we just found out that yesterday, that funeral did happen,” said Wilhauk.

Wilhauk says that in starting this campaign, she never questioned if wishes would go unfulfilled.

“I didn’t even think for one minute that no one is going to walk by a wish, when a mom is like I just need a little bit of food in the evenings for my children. No one’s going to walk by that,” said Wilhauk.

The folders in the window at Brickhouse Smokery are now mostly empty. That’s because of the 76 wishes that came in, only five remain.

And that’s not to say the five remaining couldn’t change a life. For example, one is a story of a family who lost their baby and grandfather in the same year. Now, the young father walks to work every day between Stony Plain and Spruce Grove, wishing for a vehicle.

The ‘Come to the Brickhouse Window’ campaign ends Dec. 12.