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It wasn’t exactly a typical Saturday at Erin’s Pub in St. John’s, N.L. this past weekend.
Business owner Allan Bearns took to the bar’s stage himself that afternoon, not for a concert, but for what he called his “weird way” of giving back to the community.
He was about to read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in its entirety in front of an audience — no matter how long it took.
Bearns set out to collect donations for The Gathering Place as customers walked through Erin’s doors to listen to his rendition of the 1937 tale.
Saturday marked legendary author Tolkien’s birthday. His recurring themes of camaraderie and adventure helped Bearns in his decision to read his work aloud in aid of the Gathering Place, which serves the city’s homeless.
“All Tolkien’s books are about… the best things in humanity and, you know, putting everyday people who might even consider themselves nobodies into these fantastical positions of doing good,” said Bearns.
He likened the “impossible” task of reading The Hobbit cover to cover in one day to when its titular character Bilbo Baggins helped slay Smaug the dragon.
‘It’s a problem’
Although Bearns says while his fundraiser idea is on the sillier side, the issue at its core is close to his heart.
“When I lived in Alberta, a few times in my life, I was homeless for a couple of months here and there,” he said.
Homelessness looks different for everyone who experiences it, said Bearns. For him, it looked like sleeping on a friend’s couch or a utility trailer.
Bearns was homeless for the last time in 2018, he told CBC News while speaking in the warmly lit pub he came to own just a handful of years later.
“It’s a problem and there’s a lot of solutions that aren’t happening,” he said. “The Gathering Place is a place that is probably one of the shining examples of fighting against that.”
It took Bearns nearly 11 hours to read The Hobbit on Saturday, closing the final chapter just before midnight. He raised $1,292 for The Gathering Place as of Sunday morning.
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