Demand for House of Friendship Christmas program shuts down phoneline, hundreds queue online [Video]

A nonprofit organization is reporting overwhelming demand for an annual program that gives people a Christmas meal.

House of Friendship, a Waterloo Region based organization, opened up registrations for their Christmas Food Program on Nov. 1.

The number of people who immediately went to sign up was staggering, with 1,000 people in the online queue in the first hour. Christmas Food Program supervisor Natanya Wombwell says that’s compared to about 300 at the same time last year.

“We were seeing more than triple the demand the first day,” Wombwell told CTV News, noting that it doesn’t include Cambridge, where registrations opened a few days later.

“We did as best as we could to prepare for the high volumes over the phones and the website. But unfortunately, the first day we had both of them crash.”

Later that afternoon, the House of Friendship posted an update, saying they were still actively …