The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor A woman walks into an auditorium with a jar of peanut butter, a $2 bill and a guy in a wetsuit. No, it's not the setup to an outlandish joke, but rather part of a wacky fundraiser put on by the Kinette Club. The Ultimate Scavenger Hunt wrapped up this past Saturday, Oct. 13, after members scoured the community for an array of items. 'Everyone had a great time,' said Corinne Mathews, chair of the event. Eleven teams of up to six members each took up the hunt, making phone calls and knocking on doors in a spirited race to first place. Random articles Beginning Oct. 4, they each vied to locate 184 random articles. Aside from the aforementioned peanut butter, $2 bill and someone in a wetsuit, items included a mechanical excavator, a velvet Elvis painting and a living, breathing Mountie. Also on the list were an unsightly bridesmaid's dress, an eight-inch floppy disk, homemade playdough, and one of the team member's elementary school teachers. Mathews said some of the more obscure objects included game tickets from the original Winnipeg Jets, a picture of a team member donating his or her hair to charity, and a full-size pinball machine. See 'Car...' on pg. 7 Continued from pg. 1 On Saturday afternoon, teams checked into the R.H. Channing Auditorium, where judges checked off the articles obtained by teams with colourful names such as Super Six Scavengers and Any Which Way You Can. That night came a new challenge: a 90-minute car rally. Teams had to photograph or record themselves performing tasks such as singing Monster Mash at Pioneer Square and running a lap around Creighton's Oval of Dreams. At the end of it all, taking the top prize of $300 was Team Lalor, made up of Vania Hardy, Sarah Lussier, Karen Lemcke, Gerry Chapman and Darren Romo. 'It was good to put in all that work and get something out of it at the end,' said Romo, who, like his teammates, works for Hudbay on the Lalor project near Snow Lake. Like all of the other teams, Team Lalor was unable to locate every single item. Romo said the hardest to find was a pinball machine; a team member's mother's neighbour just happened to have one in storage. Earning $200 in second place were the Super Six Scavengers of Sharon Carmichael, Bonnie Snyder, Jackie Hritzuk, Darlene Feszczyn, Violet Lyons and Penny Bilquist. Winning $100 for capturing the car rally was Sofa King Awesome, consisting of Chelsea Russell, Kristy Schwartz, Derek Schwartz, Cory Raddysh, Alyssa White and Morgan White. Chance to unwind A post-scavenging social at the auditorium gave participants a chance to unwind and swap tales of how they finally pinned down this thing or that. With 11 teams, participation was down drastically from the 26 groups that took part in last year's debut Ultimate Scavenger Hunt. As such, the Kinettes expect only to break even. Still, the hunt generated substantial donations for local non-profits like the Lord's Bounty Food Bank, SPCA, Women's Resource Centre and Koats for Kids. More than 20 items each team collected, such as peanut butter, mittens, cat food and toilet paper, will be donated to organizations that need them. 'My overall goal for holding the event, especially at this time of year, is to be able to have people take items that they don't need anymore so that we can donate them to different groups,' said Mathews. 'This is the time of the year the food bank really does need extra food and the Koats for Kids program really does need coats.' Mathews said the scavenger hunt fit into the Kinettes' motto of 'Serving the Community's Greatest Need.' She said most members of the Kinettes, a female service club, played a role in helping to run the hunt. Given the rather disappointing number of teams taking part, Mathews said the club is considering holding the hunt every other year rather than annually. 'That might be easier for teams to participate,' she said.
