Eight-year-old Samantha Surman loves Muskoka and she loves Canada. The UK resident spends about five weeks every year at her family’s condo in Huntsville, swimming in Peninsula Lake and skating at the Huntsville Skating Club’s summer camp in August and skiing at Hidden Valley Highlands Ski Area in December. Her passion for skating started on frozen Peninsula Lake when she was four years old. And every year she can’t wait to come back to her second, and in some ways favourite, home.
So when she saw images of the fires in Fort McMurray, she was upset and immediately wanted to help.
“I saw what happened to Canada and I thought how everybody would have lost their homes and I felt really sorry for them,” she said via Skype. “I wanted to raise money for them.”
She said to her mom, Sue, “I could make cakes and sell them.” And that’s just what she did.
Because she associates ice skating with Canada, the Oxford rink where she trains four times a week became her main sales focus for a week. When she wasn’t skating she sold cakes to fellow skaters and watchers, using home made signs to advertise and provide awareness of the money being raised for the Fort McMurray appeal, said Sue.
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- Eight-year-old Samantha Surman made cupcakes to sell in support of victims of the Fort McMurray fire
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- Because she associates skating with Canada, she sold the cupcakes at her Oxford skating club.
She followed that with a cake sale to her classmates at her school in Long Compton, a village about 185 kilometres northwest of London, England.
“I explained it all to them,” says Samantha. “I showed them the BBC site about the fires and they were upset about it. There’s another girl at my school whose dad was on a plane (flying near Fort McMurray) and he could see all the fires.”
In all, she made and decorated 180 cupcakes, with help from Sue, and raised £100 (about $180 Canadian) which she will send to help with relief efforts in the area.
“This has been a wonderful process for Samantha,” said Sue. “She has engaged with many people and understood the devastation caused to the inhabitants of Fort McMurray Not bad for a little girl of eight, who lives in the UK, but for five weeks a year perfects her Canadian accent and her love of Canada.”
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