A local agency that offers support for families over the holiday season says it has 4,000 people on a waiting list for gift vouchers or food hampers for a Christmas dinner.

Caring and Sharing Exchange executive director Cindy Smith said she believes rising hydro costs and the addition of newcomers from Syria in the last year have led to the surge in demand, which is up 23 per cent from 2015.

"We were able to serve almost ... our whole list last year, but yeah, the growth is pretty overwhelming at this point," she said.

Smith said they expect to offer assistance to some 15,000 people, but the agency needs to raise another $65,000 to help everyone on the waiting list.

"These are people that can't be helped elsewhere," she said. "A lot of organizations run their own programs, but when they've exhausted [what they have] then they refer the rest to us, so we're kind of like the last chance for people to get assistance."

In August the demand for a school supply program at the exchange also skyrocketed because of the influx of Syrian refugees in the city, said Smith.

Susan Anson says she and her son still remember the smoked oysters they received in their food hamper. (Robyn Miller/CBC)

Smoked oysters in hamper left lasting memory

Susan Anson, a volunteer who helps deliver baskets, knows from experience how needed the baskets are.

She was in her 20s and a single mother living in Calgary when she was selected to receive a Christmas hamper.

"I got it and, to this day, I remember opening that box and seeing a frozen turkey for roasting, dressing, potatoes, vegetables — all the trimmings for a traditional Christmas dinner," she said.

"As well, there were extras in there I would never dream of buying, like a tin of smoked oysters and different kinds of cheeses. And there were oven mitts in different Christmas patterns and a matching apron and a wrapped toy for my son.

"I can't tell you how much that meant to me, because I wouldn't have been able to afford to be that decadent and have all of that," she said.

Anson, now an executive with a multinational corporation, said that to this day she still buys her son smoked oysters, because even though he was only four, he remembered the gift.

"That was a huge treat," she said. "We never had anything like that."