John Abbott College – The Concordian

The parking lot of John Rennie High School was full on Jan 26. Around 200 people gathered in its modest gym on Sunday afternoon for the Sîan Bradwell all-star charity basketball game, which the West-Island community looks forward to every year.

Former Montreal Canadiens forward Georges Laraque and two-time basketball Olympian Lizanne Murphy were among a dozen other celebrities who came to play against the John Abbott College basketball team in support of the Sîan Bradwell Fund.

Mike Gaudin, who started the West Island Lakers All-Star Weekend in 2001, explained that the idea came after he met Deborrah Sharon Bradwell, who lost her 17-month-old daughter Sîan to cancer, in March of 1986. He was the president of the West Island Lakers Basketball Association at the time and wanted to find a way to contribute to the cause.

In the first year of the event, about $2,000 was raised. One of the Lakers’ coaches brought then-Alouettes player Barron Miles to the game, and since then, they have a full team of stars every year. “We have a large number of celebrities coming in annually, and their support has always been outstanding,” Gaudin said.

He explained that their presence attracts a large number of spectators, which increases participation in the fundraising activities they organize. “There was one year in the beginning that it was slow, there were not enough people,” said Gaudin. “So we came up with the idea of a pre-game auction, of ’Who Wants To Play With The Stars’ and we’ve been raising 500 to 600 dollars just to have a bidder to come and play with the celebrities.”

These activities have allowed the foundation to raise tens of thousands of dollars each year for the purchase of medical equipment and other items necessary to better diagnose and treat children with cancer.

“As [role models], we try to bring people together all the time in big events like this to show how big of an impact that we can have, and it works,” said Laraque. And by seeing their idols participate in such charities, he says he hopes that they will do the same. “It’s like a chain that’ll keep going.”

Laraque said that he feels like the duty of former and current professional athletes is to contribute to society. “The least we can do is to give back to the community.”

Alessia Di Giorgio, the special events advisor at the Children’s Hospital Foundation, explained that the events held by the foundation contribute a lot of the funding for the oncology department for the past 30 years. “The Bradwell family, both by blood and by volunteers and community, has raised an exorbitant amount for the children,” said Di Giorgio. “The West Island waits for the WILBA tournament in January, and the softball tournament in August. It’s really a staple of the community and something that we count on in terms of community events for the children.”

Bradwell started the foundation with her husband Ken after the death of their daughter. She has been organizing charity events to raise money for the fund for 32 years now.

“It’s absolutely amazing for me that everything is still going so long after Sîan died,” she said. “To be able to come back and see all my friends again and have people still so keen to help the Montreal Children’s Hospital, it’s an absolutely amazing feeling. I absolutely love coming back here.”

Today, over $1,600,000 has been donated in Sîan’s name.

Feature image by Ora Bar

David Suzuki presented a lecture in front of more than a thousand students at John Abbott College in honour of the official inauguration of the new science building Wednesday.

The college cancelled classes to allow students to watch the speech, entitled The Challenge of the 21st Century: Setting the Real Bottom Line. The lecture was also available through a live webcast to more than 13,000 high school students as far away as Gaspé.

Throughout the lecture, Suzuki imparted his wisdom to the attendees.

“The planet is not in trouble,” he said. “The planet will be just fine, with or without us. We’re the ones who are in trouble.”

Suzuki said he often gets asked how the planet can be saved but expressed it was not the planet that needed saving, but the people inhabiting it.

“Environmentalism is not a speciality, it’s not a discipline,” he explained. “Environmentalism is a way of seeing our place on the planet.”

Suzuki referred to himself as an “elder” and shared his belief that it is up to elders to pass wisdom onto the next generation but that it is up to the youth to take action.

Suzuki told the students the most important difference they can make is to see the world through an environmentalist’s eyes.

Suzuki emphasized that wealth was not defined by money, but, as his father said, relationships are what constitute prosperity. He went onto explain that the last weeks of his father’s life were some of the happiest they shared.

John Abbott student Jeremy Pizzi said that while he didn’t learn anything new, the lecture was still enlightening. Pizzi found the most effective part of Suzuki’s lecture was when he held up the 1992 document World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity in which leading scientists warned against the impact of environmental destruction and global warming.

“If not checked, current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for a human society,” read Suzuki. “No more than one or a few decades remain.”

John Abbott College inaugurated their new science and technology building after the presentation. The building is heated with geothermal technology and the college is hoping it will be certified gold in the Leadership in Environment and Energy Design, a ranking system for eco-friendly buildings.

Suzuki finished by speaking about the economic market as a major factor in the environmental debate today. “If it’s not working we can change the market, we can’t change the laws of nature but we can sure as hell change the things that we invent.”