Dear Editor,
Peaceful greetings to all residents of North Grenville.
I wanted to be the first one to get a letter in to the editor regarding this year’s heyday fundraising event. I’ve lived in Kemptville for over a decade, and since I retired last year, it was my first opportunity to volunteer to help prepare for this amazing event. I was there on Wednesday and Thursday helping to pick up products that all the amazing folks of the community dropped off to be sold Friday night and Saturday in order to raise money for the Kemptville District Hospital. What an amazing experience and what an amazing group of volunteers that I got to meet and work with.
The amount of cars that continued to drive up hour after hour. It was truly incredible! And so much merchandise lined up on the lawn of the community centre waiting for all of us volunteers to get it into the building. By 3 PM, Wednesday afternoon, we had almost already filled the arena! Every time I went back inside with another load, I was amazed at how the volunteers on the inside had managed to sort out and start putting together displays merchandised by “department”.
I am sure not having this event due to past pandemic years encouraged people to bring in three years of items they needed to move out. We started running out of room pretty early on with more folks coming to drop off. The “sorters” were hard at work making sure that only undamaged and clean products made their way to the selling floor. The main objective of Hey Day is to raise money for the hospital. If we accept dirty or damaged products that we can’t sell and end up having to throw it into the garbage bins, it is counterproductive to the intent of this fundraising event. Those garbage bins need to be paid for every time they’re emptied. I noticed some people getting very angry at the volunteers who had to refuse their product. I heard that there were some mean things said on Facebook about this situation and about our hard-working VOLUNTEERS and I wanted to ensure that the town realizes we are all in this together. We are doing this as a community mainly to raise money for a good cause but also to meet new people and see friends we haven’t seen in a while. I was amazed at the amount of cars and people lined up on opening day, and so proud of how this town supports one another.
I urge anybody who has something negative to say about the way product was received or sorted to join the team and volunteer themselves next year and then I am sure you will have more empathy for why some products need to be turned away. We are all only volunteers but also like you, we are residents of this great community so please: no negative talk for this great small town event and the hard working, good intentioned volunteers who bring it together for us! Let’s keep our small town friendly and kind.
Dawn Silver
