Brent and Back 2020

Brent and Back 2020
Posted on 09/22/2020
The canoe route that the Friends of Outreach did in Algonquin Park.

On August 1st, 2020 at 5:00am a group of 20 amazing Gould Lake Outdoor Centre staff started the legendary “Brent Run” – a 162km non-stop paddle marathon across Algonquin Provincial Park - to raise money for the “Friends of Outreach (FOO)” charitable trust. FOO is a charitable trust that was formed in 1996 consisting of current and former Gould Lake Outdoor Centre staff, students and parents. The primary function of FOO is to raise money to ensure that cost is not a barrier to participate in Gould Lake’s summer programming. In the summer of 2019, FOO sponsored 44 students across various programs. We called this years fundraising campaign “Brent and Back 2020”.

 

Our paddling team started their journey at Tea Lake and paddled and portaged non-stop all the way to Cedar Lake to the town of Brent – 81km away. But the name of the challenge is Brent and Back so, as soon as they got there they immediately turned around and continued their journey paddling through the night to get back to their starting point. The team encountered some pretty intense wind and rain late in the night August 1st and into the morning August 2nd, but they fought through the weather and managed to complete the whole 162km journey in 43 hours – an amazing feat.

 

Meanwhile, our Gould Lake Outdoor Centre community was supporting our paddling team from home by donating, spreading the word and following the team’s journey on social media. Our original fundraising goal was $5,000 and our community completely blew past that goal! $9,600 was raised on our “Brent and Back 2020” fundraising page and an additional $600 came in on our main “Friends of Outreach” fundraising page, bringing the full total to $10,200! That’s enough money to subsidize 29 Outreach student tuitions!

 

A huge thank you to everyone who donated, shared, and followed along online. The Gould Lake Outdoor Centre would not be what it is without all of you. And to all of our paddlers, thank you for donating your time to support the Gould Lake Outdoor Centre’s students – we appreciate you and so do our students.

 

 

If you would like to support the Gould Lake Outdoor Centre and our Friends of Outreach charitable trust you can donate here: https://my.charitableimpact.com/groups/friends-of-outreach