For the fourth time in as many years, teams of volunteers are being ferried to the Thunder Bay Main Lighthouse by sailors of the Navy Reserve to be “stranded.”
The stranded teams are tasked with fundraising in collaboration with United Way Thunder Bay before they can be “rescued” and taken back to the mainland.
Much of the fundraising is done in the lead-up to the Great Lighthouse Rescue — United Way Thunder Bay CEO Albert Brulé says that more than $50,000 had already been raised by the start of the day’s proceedings.
He hopes the event will bring in more than $100,000 by the day’s end.
The fundraiser recruits its volunteers from United Way partner organizations, as well as from community members.
Brulé says the event is appealing for participating partner organizations, as the stranded volunteers can solicit donations for their own agencies as well as United Way.
“Lots of great causes are supported through this one event,” he adds.
In addition to the $100,000 Brulé hopes to raise, donors Cliff Friesen and Susan Jones are offering to match up to $25,000 of donations to United Way’s partner agencies.
One of the partner agencies’ volunteering teams came from the Thunder Bay Literacy Group, which is focused on adult education.
The literacy group has participated in the event every year since its inception four years ago.
Daniel Russell-Matthews, the Program Director for the literacy group, says the event “highlights the important work that we do in the community and how we band together.”
He says being stranded at the lighthouse is relaxing: “It’s a break from the grind and everything like that and just a moment to reflect and think about how much work we really do in the community, and how much of an impact we truly have together to be able to do everything that we can for the betterment of one another.”
The Great Lighthouse Rescue was created after the COVID-19 Pandemic as a spiritual successor to the Great Billboard Rescue, which had been a long-running annual fundraiser until the tradition petered out during the pandemic.
Resurrecting the rescue fundraiser with a move from a billboard to the lighthouse was the idea of HMCS Griffon Commander Nathaniel Moulson.
“The lighthouse is something that not anyone can just go visit. They have to be escorted there, it’s federal property… and so we’re escorted there by the navy,” explains Brulé.
This year’s event is sponsored by Memorial Home Hardware and by the Port Authority of Thunder Bay.
