Dan Falloon
The rookie came through.
The local Ducks Unlimited chapter, spearheaded by first-year chairperson Kevin Begin, hosted yet another successful banquet at La Place Rendez-Vous on Friday night.
The 27th-annual edition of the dinner raised approximately $21,000 for the national DU organization—up from $20,140 last year.
“Some of the live auction items went for some pretty big bucks, so we were pretty happy to see that everyone came out and spent a little money and had a great evening,” enthused Begin.
In total, the local chapter has contributed roughly $650,000 to the national organization since 1984.
Begin was pleased with the outcome of this year’s fundraiser given there was a significant changing of the guard over the last year, in both his position and Chris Wielinga taking the lead as treasurer.
“I’m very happy,” he remarked. “It’s my first year as chairman. Things went very well.”
With Begin and Wielinga ascending to a pair of the top jobs, newer contributors pitched in to organize some of the raffles.
Begin was impressed with their performances.
“We had some newer people, we gave them some big responsibilities,” he noted. “The younger bucks took the reins and we were impressed.
“They did a great job.
“The committee had a little bit of a younger flavour to it. They brought some younger, fresh ideas,” he added.
Begin thinks the newer blood at the top will help lead to a bit of a different feel for the event in the coming years.
“Change is good,” he reasoned. “It keeps it fresh.”
Begin said his biggest challenge was being unsure as to whether he was on the right path, but the support of the committee helped him make it through.
“It was not knowing if I was doing anything wrong,” he noted.
“Everybody kept asking me, ‘So, how do you think it’s going?’ and I said, ‘Well, if it was going badly, I don’t know if I’d know,’” he recalled.
“Everybody gave me a lot of encouragement.”
But Begin stressed even though the younger members led the charge, veterans such as Larry Cousineau, Barney Maher, and past chairman Rick Hallam all were there to provide support when required.
“There were always people like Barney Maher that were still in the background,” he lauded. “He’d give me calls and get updates from me and give me reminders, so he made it very easy.”
Even though Begin had attended the DU banquet for several years, he only recently began to think critically about the role the organization plays here.
After gathering more information about its actions, he cemented his commitment to the group.
“When I first became involved with the committee, it was just a fun night,” Begin admitted.
“I had been going to the Ducks Unlimited banquet numerous times before, and when I became involved with the committee, I began to ask our representative the hard questions about ‘What does this really mean to Fort Frances?’
“Even though we’re blessed with lots of duck habitats, a lot of marsh areas, and a lot of wetland areas that are naturally preserved because we’re not expanding like the city of Toronto would be . . . the bigger picture is that all the marsh and wetland areas actually, with global warming, the wetlands, marshland areas act as carbon sinks, so they actually store carbon for us,” he explained.
“The more you destroy those, obviously, a dried-up marshland or wetland is actually the worst-case scenario.
“It releases the carbon back into the atmosphere,” he stressed.
At Friday night’s dinner, the sold-out crowd dined on roast Black Angus prime rib with au jus, oven-roasted potatoes, and green bean almondine as the entree, with cranberry bread pudding for dessert.
There also were a number of draws, including a double-decker raffle that included 75 prizes, a silent auction with 50 items, a live auction featuring 36 items, and a number of special raffles, including the “pluck-a-duck” for a 40-inch LCD TV from Sight & Sound.
The prizes came from a variety of sources, such as local artists donating photos, prints, carvings, or other handiwork and businesses supplying gift certificates or merchandise.
Ducks Unlimited itself chipped in prizes, from a branded set of bocce balls to a camouflage guitar to a Kevin Harvick NASCAR hood.
