With Christmas trees selling from $7-800 up to more than $2,000 each, the 12th annual Festival of Trees was a successful fundraiser for the Family Place once again, raising over $41,000.
With Christmas trees selling from $7-800 up to more than $2,000 each, the 12th annual Festival of Trees was a successful fundraiser for the Family Place once again, raising over $41,000.
Taking up a corner of the Co-op's Home Centre in the City Centre Mall, the Festival featured 29 trees, plus several tables laden with items suitable as gifts or decorations for Christmas time.
All of it was sold in either the live or silent auction, with the silent auction having over 110 items up for bid.
"Given everything that has gone on in community, the support was phenomenal," said Family Place executive director Kathy Helfrick.
"I think overall everything went smoothly. We were very thankful to the Co-op for letting us have that space, because if they hadn't, we wouldn't have been able to have a Festival of Trees this year," said Helfrick.
The mall had no other space available when they needed to set up, partly due to the provincial election, and a couple other locations they had checked out were also not available.
The Co-op offered a part of their Home Centre, as they are in the middle of vacating their spot in the mall.
The top price paid for a tree was $2,050 for the People's Choice winner, a tree decked out with cupcakes called "Decadent Delight", donated by Key Well Servicing.
Some of the trees were made available to be won by raffle tickets, and a couple by silent auction.
Helfrick said an independent committee selects which ones are made available this way, which allows people other than the bidders for the trees a chance to take a tree home.
On Thursday evening, Helfrick told the crowd gathered for the auction, "In some ways the flooding was the best thing to happen to us.
It was the perfect opportunity to get to know a lot of people. We had people show up at the back door to help pump out the sewage at the weirdest times; truckloads of people came to help clean up."
She added this was particularly special as she realized many people in the community were also dealing with flooding and with backed-up sewage like they were, and yet they still came out to volunteer to help them out.
