A Windsor church is helping a northern Ontario community.
Kingfisher Lake is located 350 kilometres north of Sioux Lookout, Ont. It is accessible by air all year round, waterways during the summer and ice roads in winter.
It costs a lot of money for the 411 residents in the community to put food on the table. For example, it costs nearly $20 for a carton of juice.
That is why St. Mary’s Church of Walkerville wants to help.
The women of the church have been collecting donations for the brand new Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of Mishamikoweesh in the northern Ontario community.
Their efforts were so successful, they soon discovered they could not afford to mail all of the food, clothes and school supplies to the people who need them.
But their story doesn’t end there.
The Windsor Flying Club has offered to fly all of the goods to Kingfisher Lake.
Organizer Ruth Kivinen says the idea came to her while washing dishes with Bill Crosby from the Flying Club.
A day after Kivinen asked whether there would be any pilots who could volunteer their time, six people stepped forward.
One of those pilots is Dave Kidd. He says “it’s nice to find a cause with a genuine need while we're combining something we enjoy, which is flying airplanes.”
The pilots are donating their time, and their planes to get this cargo to its destination.
Kivinen says they are extremely grateful to the pilots for donating their time. She says “we're all connected one way or the other, we need to help each other and if we don't, why are we here?”
Kivinen adds the money they set aside for postage will now be used to purchase baby formula and other children’s necessities.
Crosby says they are now watching weather reports, waiting for a 36-hour window for their seven-hour flight. It is tentatively scheduled for early September.
