Clothing donated for Garden Hill community.
On January 28, 2012, the Island Lake RCMP Detachment distributed donated clothing to the community of Garden Hill Manitoba.
What started as an idea by Constable Ryan Merasty back in December, mushroomed into boxes and boxes of donated clothing. The Island Lake RCMP Detachment felt that there was a need to help some of the local people with proper clothing for the seasons.
Detachment members formed a partnership with the Morden Police Service and once word got out. The Morden area United Way and the local Fire Department also joined in. Once the drive began for the clothing, the response was amazing and there was more than coats donated. All sorts of clothing was donated, from men’s clothes to baby clothes and everything in between. In addition, the Morden Fire Department donated fire-fighting gear including seven helmets/visors and eight pairs of coveralls.
The idea was not without its challenges. In the end, enough clothes to fill an entire garage was donated. With the clothes in Morden, not only would it have to be sorted and boxed but getting it to Winnipeg and than to Island Lake proved to be a challenge as well.
It wasn’t without the invaluable help of Constable Merasty’s father, who single handedly spent two weeks sorting, boxing and labeling 140 boxes full of various clothing items.
The Central Plains Remax Company donated the use of their truck. A friend of Constable Merasty, who also owns and operates Independence Motor Company in Portage la Prairie, shut his doors for one business day to drive to Morden, load the truck with all of the donated goods and drive them to Perimeter Airlines, who kindly donated cargo space on their planes to the communities.
After many efforts, items began to arrive in Island Lake during the week of January 20. Detachment members unloaded all of the boxes and filled the RCMP garage.
On January 28, the Garden Hill Elementary school donated the gym to host the event. Staff at the Detachment all chipped in to organize with some teachers donating their own time to help set up to give the clothing away.
Two families in the community were asked to attend the event before the doors opened, as they had recently lost all of their belongings in house fires. Without the help and generosity of all those involved this would not have been able to take place.
Four communities are policed by the RCMP from the small island of Stevenson Island; Garden Hill, St. Theresa Point, Wasagamack and Red Sucker Lake are all remote isolated First Nation communities that rely on the utilization of airplane and winter roads to access the communities.
With the great generosity from the people of southern Manitoba, the Island Lake RCMP were able to gather enough clothing items to be donated to all four communities. Items will soon be driven to the remaining communities for distribution.
The RCMP would like to thank everyone for their generosity and time to make this event a great success.
