Penny Trapnell’s husband has been a Lion for nearly 20 years. When she retired, he told her she was a Lion now.
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘I brought you a shirt, and there’s no other Penny, so you’ve got to come,'” Trapnell said.
Trapnell has belonged to the St. Davids Lioness Club for at least a decade and calls joining “the best thing I ever did.”
Family ties like hers help the club, which had 54 members at its peak and now has 10, stage the Christmas market it has held for 40 years.
Treasurer Janet Orr expects this year’s market, on Nov. 7 at the St. Davids Lions Club hall, to raise about $2,500 for local charities, including Newark Neighbours. She did not have a final count of the funds raised by publication time.
Sandy Tee has belonged to the Lionesses since the club formed in 1979 and organizes the market’s craft tables. Her husband is the longest-standing member of the St. Davids Lions Club.
“I love the market, and I’ve bought things here myself,” Tee said.
Most of the market’s 17 vendors return every year, and Orr said the new ones usually start out as shoppers.
“They were visitors before they were vendors, so they knew what they were getting into,” she said.
This year, the Lionesses moved their market up a week so it would fall on the same day as the bazaar at St. Davids-Queenston United Church, across York Road.
“It makes life a little bit easier, and we hoped it would bring in more business,” Orr said of the shared date.
Members pay dues to cover the club’s costs, so every dollar the market raises goes back to the community.
Newark Neighbours and Project Share, which helps Niagara Falls residents living below the poverty line, receive donations from the club every year.
“If you send us a request from Toronto, we don’t even look at it,” said Orr. “They have enough clubs in Toronto to support themselves.”
Funding guide dogs remain the club’s main cause. Orr said the Lionesses have paid for 14 guide dogs over the years and raised the money for the latest one in less than a year.
In 2025, a single guide dog cost the club $10,000 in bingo money.
Orr said the 10 remaining Lionesses still volunteer first whenever the St. Davids Lions Club asks for help.
“We just keep plugging on,” Tee said.
