It was another busy holiday season for the Kinsmen Club of the Miramichi. With most of our major projects taking place over a 4-week-span!

Our 19th annual Big Buck Night took place November 25th, we provided Santa Photos November 30th – December 7th. We had our annual Teddy Bear Toss during a Timberwolves game December 9th, co-hosted our Senior Supper with the Lions Club Dec. 17th, and all of it took place while we took on the Kinsmen Toy Drive which took place through out all these events.

Big Buck night sold over 400 tickets for us. As one of our major fundraisers, we were happy to see all sorts of prizes given, and some monster bucks come through the door. Tyler Stewart took home top prize with a 156-point Buck. Douglas Sturgeon was behind him with a 133.375 – pointer and Darrell Wylie took third place with 125.375. As usual, everyone in attendance had a fun night and ultimately that’s our goal.

Immediately we jumped into decking the halls to make way for Santa Claus. Over three sessions we offered pictures with the big man as well we hot chocolate and Christmas goodies. All proceeds went towards the Miramichi Emergency Centre for women, and Downtown Miramichi was involved and offered Sleigh Rides outside. Every group that attended loved the festive hall, and had a blast with St. Nick. We proudly put $500 towards the Women’s Centre and are already excited to take on the event next year.

Saturday quickly rolled around and we made our way to watching our local Timberwolves host the Woodstock Slammers. Plenty of people brought a stuffed animal and waited for our first goal to litter the ice. Though we went down 3-0 early, the Timberwolves broke the deadlock with a bar-down top cheddar snipe, giving us a truckload of stuffed toys to go towards those in need. It also paved the way for our boys to come back and score in the final seconds to win 4-3 in a very exciting game.

One week later we teamed up with the Newcastle Lions Club to host our 26th annual Seniors Supper. We had a full house for both sessions and collected over 1400 items for the Food Bank. We served over 500 meals and took in close to $300 of cash donations for the Food Bank.

In the midst of all these events, we pulled off one of our biggest Christmas miracles to date. After Tim Hortons helped us out raising well over $21,000, we helped over 200 children with Christmas gifts from schools all over the Miramichi area. Despite some obstacles, we were able to shop for and organize toys from 13 different schools and help make Christmas for some deserving kids. Big thanks to Kin Mike Loggie and his family for being the magician behind a project of this magnitude.

Aside from these projects, we still did prep work for oncoming events and kept strong with our weekly projects that feed back into the Miramichi Area. We hope everyone had an amazing holiday season and we’re glad we got to take on a big role this year in the holidays.