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Ucluelet’s Water’s Edge Resort dishes out donations

Food Bank on the Edge and Thornton Creek Hatchery grateful for funding.
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From left, Robyn Rea, Dianne St. Jacques and Bill Carver of Water’s Edge Resort and Shoreside Management happily handed out donation cheques to Cris Martin of the Food Bank on the Edge and Dave Hurwitz of Thornton Creek Hatchery last week. (Photo - Andrew Bailey)

Ucluelet’s Water’s Edge Resort Society and Shoreside Management team recently doled out $4,000 of community support, breathing a much needed boost into the budgets of the Food Bank on the Edge and Thornton Creek Hatchery.

“Water’s Edge has been very successful and the society and management team like to contribute back to the community,” Shoreside director Bill Carver told the Westerly News after a June 25 cheque presentation at the resort.

“One of the reasons why we are successful is the people within the community.”

The food bank received $1,500 and the Hatchery received $2,500.

“Having come from a small fishing and farming community on the east coast, I know how valuable services such as the food bank are,” he said.

He added the Hatchery donation was made in honour of the late Don Cameron who had served as a cherished member of both the resort and hatchery teams.

“He was an integral part of the resort for many, many, years and I know Don was an integral part of the hatchery and we felt that, in memory of Don, we would like to make a contribution to that as well.”

Hatchery manager Dave Hurwitz said the donation was a celebrated surprise.

“There’s a lot of great societies in our town that make it a rich place to live,” he said. “It’s incredibly valuable and it’s really humbling to get support from great businesses like Water’s Edge.”

He said the donation came at a vital time as the hatchery is looking at bills for much needed upgrades and has not had an increase in annual funding from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada for about 30 years.

“We are on a 30-year-old budget from the government right now and when you have water running inside and outside of a facility, it’s going to need maintenance,” he said. “Big leadership donations like this really are integral to letting us keep going, maintain our facility and keep growing our education programs.”

Food Bank on the Edge executive director Cris Martin said Water’s Edge has been a valuable and consistent supporter of the food bank and that the donation would go towards the food bank’s efforts to secure a new building outside the town’s tsunami inundation zone.

“This substantial cheque today is a very critical component for us going forward as we are trying to get a new building for the food bank and get out of low ground up to high ground,” she said. “This is going to be another bump in our budget that will enable us to continue researching and finally, hopefully, purchasing before the end of the year, some kind of new housing for the Food Bank on the Edge.”

She added the generosity of local businesses is paramount to the success of West Coast non-profits.

“We live in a tiny community and it’s critical for non-profit societies to be able to, unexpectedly or expectedly, rely on businesses who want to support opportunities in their local community for helping out,” she said. “That’s what we’re all part of doing, helping each other live in this community. And, it’s a great feeling to be part of the comradery that exists between societies and businesses.”



andrew.bailey@westerlynews.ca

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Andrew Bailey

About the Author: Andrew Bailey

I arrived at the Westerly News as a reporter and photographer in January 2012.
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