What do you get when you combine the rebranding of the Canadian Ski Patrol (CSP) with a basement full of slightly worn winter jackets and a group of Huntsville High School students looking to do good for the community? You get 35, very warm, re-purposed winter jackets donated to Huntsville’s Salvation Army.
Bradley Redwood, who is the VP of Ops for the Canadian Ski Patrol – Muskoka Region, said a country-wide redesign of the Patrol’s uniform and crest left the local organization with about 35 jackets that could no longer be worn by the patrollers. The jackets were being stored in Peter Redwood’s, Bradley’s dad’s, basement.
The Canadian Ski Patrol changed their colours and crest last year in recognition of their 75th anniversary. Photo: skipatrolmuskoka.ca
As is apt to happen around the dinner table, conversation one night turned to what was being stored in Peter’s basement and what should be done with it all. The jackets were in perfectly good condition so it seemed a shame to put them in the landfill, but because they were crested with the ski patrol insignia they could not be used.
The CSP volunteers are busy year-round providing advanced first aid services, not only on the ski hill but at community sporting and cultural events as well. They just didn’t have the man-hours required to get the jackets ready for donating. A long-time Rotarian, Peter brought up the idea of bringing in the Interact Club, a Rotary-mentored group of high school students who are always looking for worthwhile community projects to take on.
It was a match made, well, around a dining table. The HHS Interact Club, which has 25 members, met over the lunch hour throughout the month of November and set to work, diligently removing all the cresting from the ski patrol jackets.
Rotary representative for the club, Karen Patterson, has been mentoring the group for the past couple of years and is proud of the growth in leadership that has been made.
Our role is to get them involved and mentor them in leadership. We are helping to grow leaders of the next generation, to foster that feeling of doing good for the sake of doing good and helping them to identify opportunities and think in a way of how can they help and how can they do good. We have been trying to get them to think more globally. The ski jacket project is a good example of that. We had the ski jackets that were full of crests that needed to be de-crested to be donated so they had a lot of fun lunch hours. They got together two or three times over lunch and had a big stitching fest.Karen Patterson
Salvation Army Major Darren Wiseman was beaming as the jackets were laid about the lobby of the Salvation Army citadel. Darren says the jackets will not be taken to the Thrift Store but will stay with the Army to be handed out on an as-needed basis. The jackets come in two styles, one has zip-off sleeves and the other has an inner lining that can be removed and worn separately for ultimate versatility.
Warm bodies = warm hearts, that’s surely how all who were involved in this project are feeling.
The Interact Club will be holding a gift-wrapping fundraiser at Huntsville Place Mall on December 21 from 4pm – 9pm.
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