A Ray Of Hope From Personal Tragedy
By John Swartz
The Building Hope campaign and project management team held a press conference Friday to announce two things. One, they are only $500,000 away from reaching their goal of $14.5 million needed to pay for the new community hub on Queen Street, and two, they have a white knight in James A. Burton who has a plan to get them to the goal.
“The partnership we have formed with the James A. Burton & Family Foundation has been a highlight of our campaign and we anticipate a long and healthy partnership with the foundation for the future of the Lighthouse,” said Lynn Thomas, the Building Hope campaign manager.
Burton will donate dollar for dollar, times 3, any donations that come in for this last leg of the fundraising campaign.
“If you give $10, we will make it $40. If you $1,000 we will make into $4,000. If you give $10,000 we will commit to match that and multiply it to be $40,000. We want to finish off this campaign,” Burton told the assembled.
In effect, the campaign only needs to raise $125,000, hopefully by June when the new facility is scheduled to be open.
“That doesn’t mean people have to give the cash right away, it means they pledge. So as long as we have pledges then we’re considering the campaign completed,” said Glenn Wagner, co-chair the project.
Burton is originally from Orillia. He now lives in Niagara on the Lake.
“I’m here often,” he told SUNonline/Orillia.
In 1978 he started an insurance brokerage called PPI Financial in Calgary and grew it into a Canada wide company. In 2018 he sold it to Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc. of Quebec City and set up the James A Burton & Family Foundation.
“We then took some capital and put into a family foundation so that my children could be involved with me going forward in creating a legacy of giving,” Burton said.
They have a strategy how to use the foundation and it comes from a family tragedy. His son Jeffrey died in 2012 from a drug overdose.
“He’s a twin. His brother Greg will be up here working and helping with the project,” Burton said. “Both my twins had addictions. They’ve gone through, at different times, help programs. Jeffery was straight and clean for a number of years.”
There was a relapse and Jeffrey thought he was using cocaine.
“It had all sorts of things in it that were so powerful it just killed him,” said Burton.
The reasons people end up homeless and needing the services of the Lighthouse Soup Kitchen, of which Building Hope is their expansion project, are many and drug addiction (or recovering from) is one of them.
“That obviously had a profound effect. You never do recover from that, but we can use that and I’ve been able to use it in part of my discussions with my (6 remaining) children about what we want to do and the projects we want to support, which will be education, mental illness, addictions, things we think we can be more hands on in working with as a family and that’s exciting,” Burton said.
“Kids of all walks of life, whether you come from a struggling part of town or a wealthy family are still open to all these challenges growing up.”
“These realities happen to all of us. There’s families in Orillia that relate to my situation; children who have addictions or children who have mental illnesses. We have a chance to make a difference. We have a chance to create an opportunity to reach out to the Jeffreys who are in the street. We have a chance to reach out to that father that can’t have a job anymore and doesn’t know where to turn, or that mother with a child who has been turned out in the street and doesn’t know where to go.”
What is surprising is Building Hope’s fundraising campaign was not affected by the pandemic slowdown. In fact, Burton has already given $1 million and the amount announced Friday is additional. Wagner is surprised, and not surprised the campaign has done so well in trying times.
“It’s interesting, in the pandemic, and the Coldest Night of the Year is an example, people really have stepped up. At the Coldest Night of the Year we blew our objective out of the water. Our objective was $135,000, we did $177,000.- this year, in 2021, during the pandemic.,” Wagner said.
“It just shows the heart of the community.” Orillia’s effort was stupendous. The City was 5th in Canada for raising the most money of 150 communities participating in Coldest Night. If the pace keeps up, the new facility can open without debt.
“We have always had the goal to open without a mortgage and we think that goal is well within reach,” said Thomas.
To make a donation, visit the campaign’s website.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: The Building Hope project team announcement Friday.
