At the beginning of the housing crises in Halifax, in early 2022, Stephen began to notice the ever-increasing number of homeless people living in tents and emergency shelters on municipal land.
Spurred by the protests at the Spring Garden Road library, and recognizing that the problem was only getting worse, Stephen once again leveraged his large Twitter following to do some good.
The idea was silly unique, to say the least, but coming from a raccoon, it made perfect sense. Stephen made a pickled egg – just one – in a mason jar, asking community members to donate to Out of The Cold Halifax for a chance to win the single pickled egg, each $5 donation was an entry to the draw to win the dubious prize.
Thus began a hype campaign that saw photo shoots of the egg all over the city, egg-themed auction lots donated by local makers, a very serious controversy involving lettuce on a donair and a bracket to name the egg, with the deciding vote being cast by none other than Gus the Tortoise.
In the end, Stephen’s silly unique idea resulted in $4500 being donated to Out of the Cold, directly helping Haligonians in need.