Submitted by West Kootenay Toy Run Association
The following is a copy of a letter sent to Castlegar’s mayor and council:
The West Kootenay Toy Run has been in operation since 1988. We have enjoyed being able to donate in the neighbourhood of $30,000 yearly to food banks, charities and community groups supporting kids and families as well as the toys that are donated to four local Salvation Army groups for their Christmas hamper programs. We also provide bursaries to our local high school students.
In those 35 years we have enjoyed an unbelievable level of support from our local communities, businesses, fire departments, city police and the RCMP and couldn’t do what we do without them or our volunteers. We appreciate you all immensely. But the last couple of years there have been more hoops to jump through.
• We have insurance for the event but found out we need more to go through Nelson. We bought more insurance.
• We have experienced flaggers but this year we needed professional flaggers to go through Castlegar. We got professional flaggers.
• We’ve had the fire department escort us through towns, we have had police and RCMP help us block traffic though intersections until last year. We were stopped from blocking traffic in Nelson by RCMP.
Do we disrupt your towns? Yes we do, for about 20 minutes, once a year with flaggers blocking traffic to make it as quick and as safe as we can for all. Can you imagine what would happen with 200+ bikes going through your town without flaggers/without blocking traffic? How safe would it be? How long would we block side streets?
Our volunteers work hard all year to organize our Toy Run. Nope, we don’t get paid. Nope, we don’t get perks. We donate our time, work hard for our communities, and we want to continue, but its hard when the rules keep changing and its impossible when the goal posts move without notice.
Help us, help our communities. Please forward any permit/license applications or new policies we need to be aware of.
West Kootenay Toy Run Association