George Jeffrey Childrens Centre Opens
by Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
The George Jeffrey Childrens Centre oficially opened their new $10.5 million, 35,00 sqaure foot state of the art facility dedicated to enriching the lives of children with disabilities. On hand were hundreds of people who had some involvment in the project including the Honourable Minister Michael Gravelle of the Ministry of Northern Development & MInes and Deb Matthews from the Ministry of Children & Youth Services.
You could just feel the excitement and sense of accomplishment in the air from all those present. “ It been a journey on both building the building side and raising the money on the public side. Construction was underway for 1 year, but the project has been under way rom the Ministry much longer than that,” said Tom Jackson, Chair of the Building and Fundraising committee George Jeffrey childrens Centre who works as an investment advisor at BMO Nesbit Burns. “ There were two engineering studies which found a previous old foundation we weren aware of here and some other surprises along the way.”
The George Jeffrey team had to fundraise $4.5 million which include the $1 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage fund. “ Our fundraising has been over 4 years from 3200 donars including the John Howard Society of $250,00 and the House Draws etc. Tim Hortons
had just come through with a big donation. Some of it was kids with their allowance money, some donated chairs,” said Jackson. “ If you spend some time with the kids you know how important it is. All around it is a tremendous accomplishment for the whole community. We
have groups that will keep helping us. For example we have our greenspace outside to allow kids to try out wheelchairs walkers etc in a safe space.”
Perhaps the most well known face of the project has been that of Bob Speer. “ What a day this is. It is just fantastic. It really is a relief. There were lots of headaches along the way Im telling you but we had just a great team of people working with us and somehow when
problems came up we were able to get through them. The result is this building and the help we are going to give to the children,” said Bob Speer. “ There were over 3200 individual donars and that is a fact. That says so much about Thunder Bay and the region. Prior even
to coming here I had four phone calls to pick up cheques. I am very satisfied and happy. The building is fantastic and seeing the pool with kids in it is something to see. When children are doing things to help other children it is fantastic The grades 3’s at St Margaret School had a bake sale to help. Westgate high school basketball tournament sent all the funds to us. It is just fantastic!”
I am sure when the group of people on this project first started it looked like a daunted task, but look at the result. When you put your heart and soul into something you never know what you can accomplish!