A new community event committee taking root and garnering the attention of the Premier thanks to the success of the impromptu Canada Day celebrations.
For the second time this summer, a community-organized event will take place at Schumacher Lions Club Park, and one of the organizers, Dave Farrell, said it’s the beginning of something bigger.
“We had a successful Canada, and I have to emphasize that it’s community people chipping in,” said Farrell. “There’s so much negativity in the world right now that we wanted to do something positive. We wanted to bring something to the kids to make them happy, to have fun.”
Farrell posted a letter from Premier Doug Ford sent the group on the Canada Day celebrations on Facebook on Wednesday, July 17. In the letter, Ford congratulated the volunteers for the work they did and their commitment to making Canada Day special.
The Monday, Aug. 5 event will feature food, music, and games for families similar to the community-organized Canada Day event. The organizers are looking for volunteers for the day and to join the committee to continue these gatherings throughout the year.
“We haven’t finalized anything yet,” he said. “We’ve got some people who are working with us to help us do it the right way.”
During the Canada Day event, donations to the Timmins Food Bank were collected, totalling around 350 pounds of food. This time, the organizers are giving to the South Porcupine Food Bank. There will be some extra motivation to make donations this time around.
“For everyone who brings in a food item, they’ll get a ballot and get a chance to win one of three or four gift cards,” he said.
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First Student Canada has donated a bus to use as a shuttle service, but organizers are still working out what the pick-up spots will be.
“We need some input from people who are going to go to figure out where the bus needs to go,” he said. “We need community members to let us know where we should pick people up.”
The event will include music and games in Schumacher Lions Club Park, as well as a free barbecue.
“We’ve gotten quite a few donations already, so everything is going to be free,” said Farrell.
Farrell and his daughter Piper have been credited with starting the ball rolling with the first event, but he said nothing would get done without the community members who stepped up.
“We need more volunteers. We have a good group of people now, but we need more to help with games, and help with organizing other events,” he said. “They can go to Facebook and search for the community-organized events committee page.”
The page for the committee is separate from the event page for Canada Day.
“We’re keeping that page for next Canada Day because we’re going to be doing it again next year,” he said.
He hopes the committee can continue to hold events in the future.
“They can make suggestions. I think one of the suggestions so far was to have something in the winter to bring people together,” he said.