A cool and wet Monday morning didn’t dampen spirits at the Trillium Retirement and Care Community.
With COVID-19 restrictions in place limiting group sizes as well as access to retirement and long-term care facilities, it was a small group that stood outside the Trillium facility in Kingston’s west end.
Complete with a piper, the Royal Kingston Curling Club had a gift for Trillium’s roughly 210 employees.
Curling club members showed up with $25 restaurant gift cards for each employee at Trillium.
Curling club president Edward Gibson told Global Kingston the idea was one of the club’s members’ in late April.
“It’s a challenging time for everybody, but in particular those people in the front lines, and one of the key front lines, of course, is hospitals and long-term health care centres,” Gibson said.
The original plan was to raffle the gift cards, not knowing how much money the members of R.K.C.C. would raise.
Gibson says after their first effort, they were very close to having enough money to buy a restaurant gift card for each Trillium employee.
“So we did a secondary drive there and managed to bring it up over $5,000.”
The gift cards were purchased from four local restaurants.
Gibson says supporting the local businesses just added another check mark in the win column.
“Some of the local restaurants are challenged as well, and small business is the backbone of this community, so we really want to support small businesses as well,” Gibson said.
The gift by the curling club also coincides with the start of National Nursing Week.