The Mont. St. Joseph Foundation is celebrating a special anniversary this Saturday.
The Foundation is hosting the 25th Annual Monty fun-spiel at the Prince Albert Golf and Curling Club. Mont St. Joseph Foundation Resource Development Coordinator Jessica Gale said that the annual event has become an eagerly anticipated tradition.
“This is our longest running fundraising event for our foundation. We call it a one-day funspiel,” Gale said. “It’s a one-day curling bonspiel, but the emphasis is on fun.”
There will be 32 teams competing for fun on Saturday, according to Gale. There will also be an online auction that starts Thursday morning and runs until Sunday evening.
“Anybody can get on and bid,” Gale said. “It doesn’t matter where they live. We’ve had folks bidding from Greece before on that.”
The fundraiser was started by Dennis Bleier in 1999. Bleier was the foundation chairperson at the time, and he was looking for new fundraising ideas.
“The Monty was his baby, his dream,” Gale said. “He worked for Kin Enterprises and he wanted to instil the (importance) of fundraising and how it could be fun and a family event, and thus the Monty was born.”
Gale said having a fundraiser last for 25 years is special.
“Even through COVID, we found a way to make it an iceless or a phantom Monty, as we called them, so even through COVID we were able to keep it running,” she explained.
The Monty is on Saturday Feb. 10 at the Prince Albert Golf and Curling Centre, the first draw is at 9 a.m. and last draw starts at 3 p.m.
Over the past 24 years the Monty has raised more than $500.000 for new or upgraded medical equipment at the Mont St. Joseph Care Home.
“Each one of our, projects could be a little bit different, but the Monty has always been for medical equipment,” Gale said.
She said the focus this year is on redeveloping the dining service for residents.
“We’re not quite sure how that’s going to lay out, but we want to make sure that it’s more home like because the first line in any kind of medical program is making sure that we want to eat and what we’re eating is good for us,” Gale said.
The auction runs from Feb. 8 at 8 a.m. until Feb. 11 at 6 p.m. The link for the auction site is www.auctria.events/MONTY25 .
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
