THUNDER BAY — Thirteen rescue operations were successfully completed on Wednesday as part of the Great Lighthouse Rescue.
The Great Lighthouse Rescue replaces the old billboard rescue fundraisers for the United Way of Thunder Bay, which CEO Albert Brulé said was an incredible opportunity to bring together community partners, donors, volunteers, friends of various United Way funded agencies.
“We've got teams coming together as mermaids, we have a group called Leeks in the Boat, we have the United Castaways of Thunder Bay, so we're having a lot of fun,” he said.
“We're raising a lot of money, we had a matching grant challenge from our honorary commander for this operation, Cliff Friesen, he put up $25,000. Our goal is to try and triple that over the course of the day, so we're getting close probably by the time we're done, we'll have surpassed our goal.”
Brulé said that the idea for the Great Lighthouse Rescue came just nine weeks ago, when HMCS Griffon Lt.-Cdr. Nathanael Moulson and the crew of the HMCS Griffon were looking for ways to help out in the community.
“They reached out to the United Way back in February to say something along the lines of we're fit, we're able, and we want to help,” said Brulé.
“So we met with them to say, well, what kind of a project or what kind of a fundraiser or community event could you get involved in and we told them about the Billboard Rescue, and we weren't sure if we were going to bring it back this year or not and Commander Moulson was like a beacon of light, went off in his head and he went, what if?”
While it may not seem an easy feat to put together and set up an event like the Great Lighthouse Rescue in such a short amount of time, Moulson said that with his crew and the United Way team working to get things done together, it all worked out well.
“To be honest, for us this is kind of like status quo, right? So, nine weeks is quite a long time for, you know, a bunch of military people to plan an event like this and to be fair, we just focused on the logistics of the water portion really,” he said.
“We're moving people from this location here out to the lighthouse and so we took responsibility for all of that and then Albert and his team did all the promotion and organizing the food and all that, so yeah, we broke down the tasks and we were able to pull it off without too much stress.”
The fundraiser raised over $75,000 by the end of Wednesday’s events, and Brulé said that the donation portal will stay open for a while longer for those who wish to help but weren't able to by the start of the event.
