The Quesnel Legion is really cooking, now, but it was on the brink of going cold.
Every kitchen needs an oven, and a commercial-sized kitchen needs a big, heavy-duty one. Theirs broke down over at Branch 94 and needed to be replaced. The price tag was about $16,000.
“That is a lot for an organization like the Legion. Insane, right?,” said Stacey Wright of Fraser River GM. “So Shane took the initiative to ask some local businesses to donate $500 per business. They basically came up with enough and actually exceeding what was needed.”
Wright is explaining what happened after MLA Coralee Oakes heard from the Legion about their kitchen dysfunction and was relaying the problem to Shane Thon, general manager at the auto dealer. Thon and Oakes felt too strongly about the benefits of the Legion to let that community asset suffer.
When the word got out to the Quesnel business community that $500 was the entry point for getting in on the oven rescue, the cheques rolled in and didn’t stop when the big stove was paid for.
“We received an amazing gift from the businesses in our town,” said a Legion spokesperson. “The amazingly generous business men and women of our town, with a little gentle nudging from Shane and Coralee, presented us with the gift of $18,500. Coralee heard we were in dire need of a new stove to keep our kitchen, a major source of Quesnel Legion income, running properly. Once the businesses in our town heard about the Legion’s need, they came up with an idea to help us out and ran with it. The Quesnel Legion will be forever grateful for their amazing generosity.”
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