Fundraising finished

The Thunder Bay Disaster Relief Committee is officially done fundraising.

The campaign wrapped up Thursday and while committee chairman Wayne Fletcher said they won’t have a final total until early next week, as of last Tuesday they were at around $1.4 million.

The committee was originally hoping to raise about $5 million, which would be matched 2-to-1 by the province, but Fletcher said he’s satisfied with what they’ve raised.

“I really believe when you’re asking for donations and you’ve raised the kind of money we’re starting to talk about, that’s substantial,” he said.

“I think we could use a little bit more but in general we’re still going to be able to give out a fair amount of money.”

The DRC received a few more donations Thursday morning at city hall. St. Patrick High School drama teacher Patricia Del Paggio presented Fletcher with a $10,000 cheque the students raised through internal fundraisers and two showings of Tis the Season Charlie Brown.

Del Paggio said every year they choose a charity to raise money for through the drama department and this year the DRC was an easy choice.

“When the floodings hit in May, a lot of our students were affected by it,” she said, adding at least three of the 26 Grade 12 drama students had basements destroyed by the flood.

They set a goal of $5,000 and were shocked when they saw the final total of $10,000.

“We surpassed all of our expectations and are very proud of it,” Del Paggio said.
TBayTel interim president and CEO Dan Topatigh presented the committee more than $32,000 raised by TBayTel employees and customers.

“It’s really driven by the motivation of our own employees to decide to do something,” Topatigh said. “They really have a lot to be proud of.”

Now that all the fundraising is done, the next step for the DRC is processing all 600 claims.

Fletcher said they’ve set a deadline to have that completed by the end of February so that people can receive the aid money in March.

It may be a long time to wait for some people and Fletcher said he understands their frustration. However, they have a process to follow.

“We have an awful lot of due diligence we have to follow. This is donors’ money and taxpayers’ money we’re dealing with,” he said.