The Shawville arena hosted the local minor hockey association’s home closer this past Saturday, packing out the venue for most of the day.
SDMHA first vice-president Edward Rusenstrom said this year the association decided to host a formal closing event to the regular season, noting it was a fundraiser for the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), specifically for diabetes. He said that his son Irving made a donation to the organization in the summer (see our Sept. 9 edition) and the family had kept in touch.
“So back in August my son cut his hair and donated it to CHEO,” he said. “The contacts we made down there, I talked to them that night about the potential of doing something with minor hockey and they were on board with it so we stayed in touch and we decided this one would go towards the diabetes unit, for youth diabetes. In the last couple years, some of our players from the SDMHA have been diagnosed.”
In addition to the teams competing to raise money amongst themselves, there was also a table in the lobby where attendees could make donations. He added that they were hoping to continue the partnership for future events.
“Today was basically a trial run for us to see what works, what doesn’t work, and what we can do in the future to make it better,” he said. “We plan to try this again, maybe at another SDMHA event next winter or next fall and see how it goes.”
Rusenstrom said that having the municipality’s winter carnival just outside was a help with all the added foot traffic.
“It worked out nicely, with the town having their carnival today, there were lots of people around all day, so it was actually really nice,” he added.
