THUNDER BAY - Supporters of bringing the Alexander Henry to Thunder Bay are planning a new fundraising campaign to kick off 2017, with the hopes of raising more than $50,000.
Members with the Lakehead Transportation Museum Society will be launching Bring Henry Home in early January, with the hopes of raising money to help tow the 50-year-old ice breaker built at the Port Arthur Shipyards in 1959.
“We are just developing that now,” said Charlie Brown, president of the Lakehead Transportation Museum Society. “Hopefully we can unroll that in the next couple of weeks. It is a major campaign and we hope to secure up to $50,000 to match the private donor that is out there in the community.”
The upcoming campaign is part of an ongoing effort to raise money and support for the project, which includes a Go Fund Me page created in late November.
It will cost roughly $250,000 to tow the 64-metre icebreaker from Picton, Ont. near Kingston to Thunder Bay. The funds raised from the community will add to the $50,000 already collected from a private donor and $50,000 the city of Kingston has agreed to pay.
The LTMS made a request to city council for an additional $125,000, which was deferred to the Waterfront Development Committee and administration to draft a report. An application for funding from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation has also been started. Brown said he hopes to raise the $50,000 through the fundraising campaign as quickly as possible.
“We certainly need the money by the time we end up securing the tow,” he said. “We are hoping that will be late spring, early summer. But we are going to have to determine how that will play out because we are still in talks with the city and we have some other meetings with the waterfront development committee in the next month or so. Until those are all sorted out, we can’t put an exact date on it.”
The Go Fund Me page for the Alexander Henry has raised $1,000 so far and has 176 shares. Brown said he expects interest to pick up in the New Year with the launch of the campaign.
“I don’t know if it’s sluggish or if it’s just the holiday season,” he said. “We haven’t been really up to our campaign in this point in time. In the New Year, we will start a campaign and we will really be pushing it and it will be out in the community a lot more.”
“We are just in the infancy stages,” Brown continued. “We are going to pick up speed again in January.”
