Centre Goéland

The Centre Goéland holds fundraiser to make ends meet

Ryan Quigley

Journal Pioneer

The Centre Goéland is holding a fundraiser to help save the establishment from financially collapsing.

The $1.2 million building, owned by the community of Evangeline, was built in 1975, but it began to need repair. The repairs, which finished four years ago, also included expanding the Centre from 24 rooms to 48 putting Goéland $60, 000 in debt.

Recently the centre, which serves as an event centre and vacationing lodge, located in Cape Egmont, was worked fully by volunteers during customer visits, which helped bring down the debt, but that became strenuous for those involved.

“At this point it’s been run by volunteers, but that can’t happen anymore. I’ve been one of them who’s been putting in 20 or 30 hours a week but I have a full time job,” said the Centre Goéland president Claudette Gallant. “It’s just not feasible to think that volunteers can operate an operation of that size.”

Holding a meeting in June to decide how to approach the problem, the community refused to sell the property.

“Basically what we told the community on the 20^th of June, if we can’t find the funding in the community or elsewhere that we’re not going to have any other options, it’s going to have to go up for sale,” said Gallant. “One guy got up and said at the end of the meeting, ‘There are no three options, there’s only one option and we’re going to keep it.’”

The property is holding a year-long fundraiser to help curb some of the debt while helping establish permanent employment positions and helping contributing to the marketing of the nine-acre centre, which is a cost Gallant said will amount to $5,000 a month.

They are selling $100 tickets for a lottery in which first two tickets picked will each win weekend stays at the centre for up to 48 people, worth over $2000. Third prize will receive a quilt valued at over $500.

Other fundraising events are being planned.

“Just over the weekend here there was the fiftieth reunion at the (Evangeline School) so we had a table there and sold a few tickets there and got the message out to several hundred people there,” said Gallant.

There are other fundraising events in the works with Gallant’s goal of for them is pretty clear for her.

“My goal would be to establish a regular cash flow coming in, to be able to pay our operational costs, be able to find a team to run the place and that eventually we would want to erase the mortgage because that mortgage is costing us 40 per cent of our operational cost.”

Tickets for the lottery can be bought at the RDEE P.E.I. offices in Charlottetown as well as the Rural Action Centre in Wellington, the Acadian Festival and later to be announced locations.