CALEB NICKERSON
CLARENDON Oct. 4, 2018
On Thursday evening, officials and members from the local community gathered at the Little Red Wagon Winery in Clarendon to kick off the 74th Centraide Outaouais fundraising campaign.
Centraide, known as the United Way in Anglophone areas, helps fund 79 agencies across the Outaouais that supports vulnerable people. Seven of these organizations are in the Pontiac, including, but not limited to: Bouffe Pontiac, Jardin Educatif and Le Patro Fort Coulonge-Mansfield. They also support the MRC’s Back to School program, for a total investment in the region of more than $160,000 for 2018/19.
The kickoff event started with a happy hour before Pontiac Warden Jane Toller addressed the assembled guests.

“In some parts of Canada, this organization is called the United Way, and once I heard an expression: ‘Without United Way, there is no way,’” she said. “And so, here in this region we call it Centraide, ‘Sans Centraide, il n’y a pas d’aide.’”
One of Centraide’s chief concerns in MRC Pontiac in particular is the fact that a quarter of residents do not have a high school diploma, compared to 15 per cent in the rest of the Outaouais. In addition, 21 per cent of the population are considered low-income, with the figure rising to 24 per cent for those 65 and older.
As of 2015, nearly half the Pontiac’s labour force works outside the region, with 22 per cent commuting over two hours daily.
“We can do better than we did last year,” Toller asserted. “One thing that the MRC is going to do is involve all the mayors and municipalities so that we won’t just be doing the MRC building itself. The employees have been generous and raised quite a bit, but we’re now going to put the responsibility onto the municipalities. We’ll give the mayors a good pep talk and I’m sure they’ll do their very best.”
She then introduced former Pontiac MP and Foreign Affairs Minister, Lawrence Cannon, who currently serves as the chair of the campaign.
“I think that it’s extremely important, and Jane mentioned it a couple of seconds ago, that the community actually reaches out and supports people who are living in precarious situations,” he said. “The money that’s raised here, stays here.”
He added that he would be looking to host a benefit breakfast with current and former elected officials in March, and would be pitching the event to the council of mayors alongside Toller and Centraide Outaouais Executive Director Nathalie Lepage.
“With Jane, I’ll be able to go and speak to the mayors with Nathalie in the coming weeks, and be able to push on that, because I think we have enormous potential here,” he said. “And this community has served me in the past as an elected official, but it’s up to me now to give back.”