Event gains visibility from shopping centre venue
By Dave Dale
The 59th Lions Christmas Telethon raised close to $27,000 in donations and pledges to help lighten the holiday load for 543 families in need across the district.
Gift and food baskets will be distributed primarily to households in the smaller, rural communities outside the city where 14 Lions clubs are active.
Organizers said the successful campaign Saturday benefitted from a new studio venue at Northgate Shopping Centre providing broader public visibility.
Bob Dugard, president of the Lions telethon committee for the past four years, said the partnership with Northgate allows the event to be "front and centre" with the public.
Dugard said they didn't meet his personal target of $40,000 "but we can accomplish what our goals are with this amount."
Backbone relationship
The expansion into mall territory supplements the backbone relationship with CTV providing airtime, a command station truck from Toronto and expert volunteers co-ordinating live broadcasts from four sites.
Combined with volunteer performances by dozens of bands, choirs, musicians and assorted performers and the Lions telethon is one of the largest single-day fundraising events of the year.
'We're on for 11 hours and it's a long evening," Dugard said during a break outside the Canadore College broadcast studio where volunteers take calls and keep track of pledges.
The Canadore College and Nipissing University partnership provides a major anchor for the telethon with staff and students offering energy and expertise to the mix.
"The student involvement is 100 per cent and they made it part of their curriculum this year, which means they're donating their time while getting marked and graded," Dugard said.
Canadore broadcast television instructor Jura Monestime said students make up 85 per cent of the manpower required to cover the four sites, including Cogeco Community Television.
Command truck
Monestime was working the command truck outside the Nipissing University Theatre with second-year student Andrew Pacey, 20, of Kanata, at his side.
Pacey's job was switching taped filler between the acts and telethon messages and he got a close look at what it takes to run the show.
"It's really fast-paced and sometimes hard to keep up," he said during a brief lull in the action.
Monestime was directing five cameras to catch the right angles at the right time and there were moments when student technicians demonstrated where they need more practice.
"Not everything goes as planned," Pacey said when asked what he's learned just three hours into the telethon.
Monestime said the students gain a lot from working shoulder-to-shoulder with professional broadcast crews as the live coverage unfolds.
"That's the whole thing about college - trying to get a link between industry and education," he said.
