Two Clearview residents mobilized their friends, families and coworkers after hearing a call for help from the other side of the world.
On Monday, December 23, Patricia Cleary Clark, owner of Mountain Ash Farm bed and breakfast in Mulmur, delivered a cheque for $3,500 to Red Cross Emergency Services for typhoon relief in the Philippines.
That amount was matched, dollar by dollar, by the Canadian government, to provide relief services to people who had been affected by typhoon Haiyan, which took approximately 6,000 lives in early November.
Clark raised the money by hosting a fundraiser at Mountain Ash’s official invitation-only opening in October. For $35, guests enjoyed food and prizes from local businesses such as Chez Michel, The Sovereign, the 100 Mile Store, Sola’s Side Door Gourmet and Creemore Springs Brewery. Clark also provided music by composer Chris Smith and saxophonist Turner King, and collected private donations from some guests.
“We have always had a great deal of fun hosting parties and events when my mother and father were alive, so it’s sort of a family tradition…Québecois joie de vivre, I suppose, as my family moved to Toronto from Montreal in the 1950s,” Clark said.
At the time of her event, she didn’t know which Red Cross initiative she would donate the money to. Then, she read about the typhoon. “There are lots of good causes, but that one did it for me,” she said.
Creemore resident Matthew Fuller also coordinated a fundraiser for typhoon relief at his workplace, the Creemore Springs Brewery, where he is the Event Coordinator. In spring of 2011, Fuller spent two months living with a family in Tacloban City, which has since been destroyed by the typhoon. While he was living there, Fuller volunteered at the Regional Rehabilitational Centre for Youth in the neighbouring village of Tanauan (see photo, above).
“While living in Tacloban City, I made many close friends and have only heard news of a few of them since the disaster,” Fuller said. “Life in this Third World country is hard to begin with, and now that families have had what little they had taken from them, life is going to be a struggle for many.”
To raise money to help, Fuller posted a request for donations at his workplace, explaining his connection to the area. The $770 that the brewery’s employees donated was matched by the brewery itself, before being doubled once again by the Canadian government for a total donation of $3,080 to the Red Cross.
For Clark, raising money for the Red Cross is something she has been committed to for years. A longtime volunteer for the organization, Clark was as an Emergency Shelter Manager in Oakville for 10 years, coordinating “mock disasters” each year in which members of the police, fire department, Salvation Army and Red Cross worked together to set up a shelter in response to a pretend emergency situation.
However, her connection to emergency support is also an emotional one. During her first real call for emergency support – the ice storm of 1999, which spread from New York to Kingston – her uncle died in Hudson, Quebec while clearing tree limbs off the roof of his house. And with the recent ice storm in Ontario on her mind, Cleary continues to think of ways to help people through the Red Cross organization.
“Since the train derailment in Quebec, floods in Alberta and exodus of Syrians to Turkey, in all touch with friends and family I wanted to reacquaint people with the good work Red Cross/Red Crescent does locating lost loved ones, and providing food and shelter here and around the world,” she said.