This month Elora’s Ian Evans is presenting a show about his journey to the South Pole, with all the proceeds going to the Centre Wellington Refugee Network (CWRN).
Early in December Evans and John Chalmers from the Gorge Cinema decided to host a benefit to help fundraise to bring Syrian refugees to Centre Wellington.
“There’s lots of fundraisers going on for the refugees and I’ve been to some of them and I’ve spent my $20 and I’ve gone through the door and I’ve done whatever’s on there and I’ve really enjoyed them,” Evans said, but he was looking for a way to do more.
“So we said ‘look I’ll donate the cinema’ and I said ‘I’ll donate my time and put on a show.’”
The admission price of $20 for adults and $10 for youth will go directly to the CWRN, which consists of independent groups each working to bring a refugee family to Centre Wellington. The groups include: Faith Evangelical Lutheran, Project Welcome and Under the Same Sky.
“We are a collective of three organizations, each of which is doing their own individual sponsorship and are working together on logistics around sponsorships, so it’s a strength in numbers kind of opportunity,” explained Curt Hammond, network facilitator.
“The goal is for the three of us to be … walking alongside each other looking for efficiencies and sharing information, looking for ways to communicate with the community with more of a unified voice.”
Evans said the focus of his show is on his 44-day pilgrimage to the South Pole, which was completed on Jan. 6, 2015.
“I tell people a story of what it meant to me to get to the South Pole, how we got there, the hardships,” he said.
“I had two really badly injured feet the whole expedition … so that was a real extra challenge for me because what a lot of people don’t understand is it’s the coldest place on Earth, it’s the windiest place on Earth, but it’s also the highest average elevation of any continent.”
Evans’ key message, he says, is that anyone can do anything when they put their mind to it.
“I truly believe if you put your mind to it you can achieve remarkable things and my slogan is, when I speak, ‘life begins at the end of your comfort zone,’” he said.
“And I’m trying to encourage kids and everyone else and people my age that you can get out there and do this.”
Evans’ show will begin at 2pm on Jan. 17 at the Gorge Cinema in Elora.
“This is all ages, totally right from five to 105, totally okay,” he said. “Get the family out.”
After Evans completes his presentation he will open the floor for a question period, give the audience an opportunity to touch some of his polar gear, show a trailer from his upcoming documentary called Lunatic: The Documentary and participate in a signing and sales of his book, also called Lunatic.
Though the Centre Wellington Refugee Network is not sure when each of the groups will welcome their refugee family, they are in the process of completing applications.
“There’s lots still in flux in terms of availability of families as well … so can’t put timelines to it, but certainly months versus years,” Hammond said. He speculated the refugee families will arrive within the year.
The network is currently collecting furniture and supplies for the families when they arrive and is looking for an accessible storage location.
“People are saying, ‘would you want this bed, do you want this table set, do you want these different things’ and we need a place to store that,” he said. “So if there’s somebody … who had accessible storage that we could start putting some things into, that would be a tremendous gift.”
The network is also approaching landlords looking at the possibility of renting three units in the same building so all three families can be close together.
“Each of the three groups and the network are committed to … each of the families having success here in Canada and this is going to be new for Centre Wellington in some ways, so we want to make sure if we’re bringing in three Syrian families that they’re able to share their experience together,” Hammond said.
“We can just be working with these families together so that they can be building immediate community with each other and then with those of us that are already here.”
More information about the network and tickets are available at http://cwrn.ca. Tickets are also available at Ashanti Café and the Elora Bread Trading Co. in Elora and Roxanne’s Reflections Book and Card Shop in Fergus.
For more information about Evans visit www.ianevans.ca.
