Rocanville groups donate to MDHCF

By Kevin Weedmark - The World-Spectator

The Rocanville Community Thrift Store and Moosomin Legion have both donated to the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation.

The Rocanville Community Thrift Store donated $10,000. The funds will be used for ipads for long term care residents to use, an electronic entrance resident directory, and for Acute Care, a vital signs machine.

The Rocanville branch of the Royal Canadian Legion donated $2,051 from their poppy fund to purchase several items for long-term care.

The Rocanville Community Thrift Store presented a donation of $10,000 to the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation last week. In back, from left, are Vivian Sveinbjornson, Laurie Surridge, Linda Pronshyn, Colleen Cousins, Joyce Surridge, Jean Howie, Denise Callin, Rocanville Mayor Daryl Fingas, and Kim Surridge.
In front are Wendy Lynd of the Health Care Foundation, Willa Clarke, Reva Zaitsoff, Penny Yung, Anne Knight, and Linda Bock.

Community Thrift Store
Wendy Lynd of the Health Care Foundation said the $10,000 donation will allow the purchase of several important items for the Southeast Integrated Care Centre.

“For the acute care, this donation will purchase a vitals machine, which tests all your vital signs, so it’s a very important machine to have,” she said. “Everyone in acute care is excited about having that machine.

“For long-term care this will allow the purchase of two iPads for residents to talk to family and friends. For the front door, it will also cover the cost of an electronic resident directory so people will be able to see who’s in Poppy, or any of the other houses, because right now you walk in and you don’t know where to go.”

The thrift store has donated to STARS, to the local hall, to Rocanville’s medical centre, and to all sorts of worthy causes in Rocanville, Moosomin, Welwyn, Wapella, Esterhazy and Langenburg.

Each year for the last five years the Thrift Store has donated $10,000 to health care, which has gone to the Children’s Hospital, STARS, and the Southeast Integrated Care Centre.

The Rocanville Community Thrift Store operates with the help of about 65 volunteers, which allows all the money raised to go back to the community.

And the amount the Thrift Store has raised is amazing.

Irene Norton says the total taken in by the thrift store came to $881,000 by the end of 2018, and she expects it will be around $950,000 by the end of this year.

“Maybe next year we’ll hit one million,” says Norton.

The volunteers are vital to the operation of the Thrift Store. “We have people who take bags to our sea-can, our overflow. We have one man who cuts our rags. We have some people who work during the day so they come and volunteer on Thursday nights when we are open. When you took the picture, that was our clean-up day, and we had 13 volunteers that day. Nobody gets paid—we’re all volunteers, and that helps. We’re all getting older, but we have some young people stepping up to help.

“We get so many donations, and people come to shop all the time from Broadview, Whitewood, Virden, Moosomin of course, and as far as Yorkton. We’re happy with how it’s going. We try to keep our prices down. We sell our stuff very, very reasonably.”
In addition to organizations, the Community Thrift Store helps individuals in many cases.

“If there’s a fire, we always make a donation,” says Norton. “If there’s one of those fundraisers for someone in need, we try to make a donation, if someone has cancer, we make a donation. We try to help out any way we can.”

Why did they decide to make the latest donation to the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation?

“We have given to them in the past and they were so grateful,” says Norton. “We always give a $10,000 donation to health every year, be it the children’s hospital, STARS, or the Moosomin Hospital because people here use the hospital. We thought this would be a good cause to support this year.”

Royal Canadian Legion Branch 20, Rocanville, presented more than $2,000 to the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation, funds that were raised through the annual poppy campaign. From left are Membership Chair Penny Yung, Secretary Brenda Hancock, Poppy Fund Co-chair Rick Hancock, and President Allan Yung of the Rocanville Legion, Rocanville Mayor Daryl Fingas who sits on the Health Care Foundation, Poppy Chair Mel Strong of the Rocanville Legion, and Wendy Lynd of the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation.

Rocanville Legion Branch
The Royal Canadian Legion Rocanville Branch #20 donated $2,051 from their Poppy Fund for Long Term Care.

The funds are for two Spenco mattresses, full body sheepskin, two call cords for residents to use and two fleece bed rail protectors.

Allan Yung of the Rocanville Legion said the group is happy to help out the Southeast Integrated Care Centre, where veterans and veterans’ spouses have been cared for over the years.

“This donation is about the Legion’s responsibility for veterans and their families,” he said. “This was earmarked for the spouses and veterans that are living in the care home. Our other mandate as a Legion is to show support for the schools, through the poster program, with bursaries. Those are our two big mandates.”

The donation last week was raised through the poppy campaign. “The funds from the poppy campaign are specifically for helping veterans and their families and work with the schools, but we have a separate fundraiser, providing food at one of the markets at the museum. We use that for local needs. Recently we didn’t get provincial approval to replace the computer system at our medical clinic in Rocanville, because it’s not considered to be a medical appliance, and we were able to fund that cost of over $1,400 through the Legion because we had some funds in our general account that we had raised locally.”

Rocanville’s Legion has a solid core of members and sees a good turnout from the community for events like the Remembrance Day service.

“We’ve actually had better turnouts these last few years than we had before,” Allan Yung said.

“We had a full church for Remembrance Day this year,” Penny Yung added. “We have lots of younger families coming out and bringing their families.”

“It’s wonderful to see people with small children at these,” says Allan. “Our town and RM continue to host the lunch after that service. They have always been very supportive. If we go back in history after World War I—the Great War of course it was called then—the RM of Rocanville provided engraved medals to every returning soldier. There were 22 from the Rocanville area that did not get to come home from that war.

“Then, after World War II the Rocanville community put on an event, and those returning men and women received signet rings that were engraved, so the RM and the towns have always shown a lot of support for veterans, right from the inception.”

The Rocanville branch of the Royal Canadian Legion has a long history.

“This is our 100th anniversary,” said Allan Yung. “We have a lot of our memorabilia on display in the old Masonic Hall in the Rocanville Museum. One of the most fantastic pieces of memorabilia we have is the founding documentation of the local branch of the British Empire Services League, which was one of a number of veterans organizations after World War I that amalgamated and grew into what we now know as the Legion.”
Yung said he believes the Legion is fulfilling an important role in Rocanville.

“I think we’re trying to do what we should do,” he said. “We’re not trying to glorify past wars in any way, but to honor the sacrifices that these folks made for our country so that we can be the country that we are.”