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     An indication of  the growth of Good Bears of the World and how far reaching it is. This is a letter we received from the den in Bermuda. 

Dear Mr. Bishop 
I am a fellow Canadian formerly of the Lakeshore area in old Etobicoke Ontario, now living in Bermuda. A few years ago I had noticed a series of articles in Bermuda's daily newspaper concerning children caught in very traumatizing situations. Having recently read a story in the Canadian Living Magazine about a Mr. Lee Wansborough in Fergus, Ontario who had started an organization called 'Good Bears of the World Canada' with the sole purpose of 'gifting' teddy bears to children who were traumatized, I wrote Mr. Wansborough seeking more information and over the course of a very short time we became good friends with a common goal. 

      Armed with information and a few ideas of my own I approached the Bermuda Police Dept. about setting up a program similar to that of G.B.W.C. (Good Bears of the World Canada) The police had heard about this concept from the Ontario Provincial Police and wanted to adopt it themselves but were in a quandary as to how to go about it. I was the answer to their puzzling dilemma. 
      Within four weeks I had set about putting everything into place. Immediately I became a member of GBWC and formed my own den. I got together 15 close friends, co-workers and family from Bermuda, the U.S. and  Canada and we became "Ambassadors' of Bear-muda Den #8". With this network of support behind me I contacted Mr Wansborough asking him to order my first shipment of 60 bears from Binkley Toys. 

 On February the 14th, 1992 amid camera flashes, the news media and Mr. Lee Wansborough at my side I presented the bears to the Bermuda Police Commissioner. 
 

I would dearly love to say that our program was readily accepted by officers who carried these bears in their cruisers but alas, I cannot. Our bears became the butt of many a joke and were even featured in a weekly political cartoon in the newspaper. 

      There is an old Bermuda Cricket expression that states, "if you stick to the wicket the runs will come". Well, the runs started to come very quickly and the jokes came to an abrupt halt when a young mother with three children in the back seat of her car (all under the age of 10) mounted a curb one night and smashed through a store front.  The mother was injured and the children were thoroughly traumatized and the officers on the scene 'gifted' bears to the children right away and the rest, they say, is 'HISTORY'. 

      Now after 6 years our beloved Binkley Bears are still on the job and they have aided children not only Bermudian but from other countries who were visiting our island. 
 The love of 'gifting' Binkley bears by our members stretches far beyond Bermuda's shores as we have sent bears to a Geriatric hospital in England, to the Marlborough Emergency Service in New Hamshire, to a terminally ill person in Toronto and most recently to a little 2 year old girl from Massachusetts who was thought to be terminally ill but I am happy to report her condition is treatable and she is on her way to getting well. Our next goal is to supply Bermuda's Air Ambulance Service with bears. This service transports very ill children to hospitals in the United States for Emergency treatment and / or surgery. 

     In closing, I want to thank all of you at Binkley Toys for making a product that all of us are proud to 'gift' and we at "AMBASSADORS' OF BEAR-MUDA  DEN #8" have discovered that your toys give as much love to those of us who gift them as they do to those who receive them.