Through a special-edition beer and some old-fashioned boot drives, St. Albert's fire department raised more than $17,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society this past October.
Firefighters and fundraising organizers Steph Fedoruk and Greg O'Neil presented a cheque to Mark Khan, a coordinator with the Cancer Society's Wheels of Hope program, on Dec. 14 at Fire Hall No. 3 in St. Albert.
Khan said the Wheels of Hope program, one of many support programs the Cancer Society funds, provides transportation for Edmonton and area residents who have no way of getting to cancer treatment appointments.
“We'll pick up people here in St. Albert with a volunteer driver, take them to the [Cross Cancer Institute], the volunteer will sit there and wait for them and then take them back home,” Khan explained. “We get constant feedback how grateful that people are for providing this service [and] a lot of times people say that if they didn't have the service, they wouldn't go to treatment at all, and that's just heartbreaking to me, personally.”
“It's so amazing for the St. Albert fire department to raise these funds and help support programs like the Wheels of Hope support program that make, literally, a life-saving difference to people right here in St. Albert.”
Fedoruk and O'Neil, who make up the department's breast cancer committee, said the fire department's collaboration with Sea Change Brewing to create Pink Sails, a limited-edition pink lemonade beer, was successful enough to raise a bit more than $3,500, and the remaining funds were raised doing boot drives over two weekends.
A boot drive, simply put, involves St. Albert firefighters setting up trucks outside grocery stores and donors putting cash inside a boot.
“Every time we do a boot drive, the community involvement is great,” said O'Neil, whose mother Audrey passed away in September after a fight with end-stage breast cancer.
“We had one lady who came up [and] started crying because she was going to be having a surgery for breast cancer in a week, so she was very happy to see us out there and fundraising.”
Aiding the department's boot drives this year were also two minor hockey teams, O'Neil said, the U17 AAA St. Albert Flyers and the U15 AA St. Albert Blues.
“The hockey teams coming out really helped,” Fedoruk said, adding that another key part of the boot drives this year was having on-duty units come by as well.
“I think we had at one point three trucks with kids in all of them, which was awesome.”
The department's annual fundraising drive is always worth the effort, Fedoruk said.
“It was definitely, by far, our biggest year ... and obviously we're a smaller department, so it's nice to raise that amount of money,” she said, adding next year's goal is to raise $20,000.
“We're going to continue to do boot drives — those are always fun to be out in the community and we bring the trucks and then all the kids can go through the trucks — it's just good for community involvement.”
Fedoruk also said there's a good chance there will be another collaborative beer with Sea Change in the works for next year.
