A cheque presentation was the icing on the cake for a number of hard-working students from Chippewa and West Ferris secondary schools.
On Monday, student ambassadors from Chippewa Secondary School gathered at One Kids Place to announce that $14,000 was raised during the inaugural Jack Lyons Memorial Hockey Exhibition which took place last Wednesday at North Bay Memorial Gardens as students from both Chippewa and West Ferris congregated at Memorial Gardens for a group of exhibition hockey games which brought back memories and the positive energy of the East-West phenomenon.
"The event celebrated Jack Lyons' life, raised autism awareness, brought our community together, and was a great display of school spirit," Chippewa Secondary School stated via social media.
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Mark Lyons, who was on hand at the cheque presentation, was humbled by the support for his son; a former Chippewa student who lived with autism and passed away just over a year ago.
"Jack's legacy for being at school and the kindness in our community, it just keeps going from where we started to now, " said Lyons.
"This place is where it starts for kids with autism. I get to that game and I have three parents tell me they had children born with autism so we need these supports and these kids helped move the needle for that."
Vaughan Thomson was one of the student ambassadors at Chippewa who got the project off the ground.
"I think it was so successful because between all our student ambassadors and everyone who took part in the program, they just really cared about Jack and they really worked hard to make this project successful," said Thomson.
"I think the effort everyone was able to put into this between missing classes and making this an extracurricular almost having this after school. There were tons of hours put into this and to see how successful it was is a really satisfying feeling."
Katharine Strang, development officer at One Kids Place, says the funds will play a key part in helping One Kids Place run autism camps this summer.
"This was an initiative we needed to keep moving, we needed to keep going," said Strang noting they do not receive any funding to operate summer their autism camps.
"There are not a lot of outlets for families with children with autism that they can participate in, in camps or group activities so this was something that was definitely identified that we needed to move forward with. It was just a little bit of a pipe dream of ours to raise enough money to host that one week and just enough to get the kids back into a program and with the legacy of the fundraising that is being done by the Lyons family and others throughout the community we are going to be able to host the camp this summer for a total of six weeks in North Bay as well as a week in Huntsville and Parry Sound.
