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2025 is off to a great start for William Morton Collegiate Institute in Gladstone.
The local Royal Canadian Legion shared a donation of $12,000 with the school’s music program in order to purchase new band instruments. In addition, the community rallied to further support this cause by fundraising an additional $4,000.
The campaign for new instruments was orchestrated by band teacher Sean Goerzen. Even he didn’t anticipate the community’s response to this call for help.
“I went into the meeting with the Legion with the hope that they would donate something,” said Goerzen in a phone interview on Morning Light. “When they came back with the offer that they were going to donate everything that I had asked for from my wish list, I was really, really thankful. It was a really exciting moment for the program.”
The idea to update the school’s instrument collection came at the beginning of the school year. It began with a general letter campaign to the western Manitoba community before the Legion was first approached. Goerzen thought that given the band program’s presence in the community over the years, most people would recognize its value and would want to give back to it.
“Lots of band programs in rural Manitoba got going in the 70’s,” Goerzen explains. “When those programs started, there was a big investment put in to be able to get all of that equipment.”
After that initial investment, and with rural school sizes dwindling over the last several decades, Goerzen notes that there’s been less money to go around for maintaining and updating school band equipment over the years. “Our equipment was running around fifty years old, and some stuff wasn’t the best quality in the first place, so there comes a time when you really just need to replace things.”
Up first on the replacement docket are a new timpani drum, French horn, oboe, and a couple of new euphoniums.
“When students see that others are investing in the program, they themselves will put in a return and have the desire to keep going with the program and feel like they’re valued and being supported,” says Goerzen, noting that these instruments will also be used by a community band program that has begun in the last couple of years.
“I think communities such as Gladstone are generations of families,” he continues, noting that teachers have had the chance to touch multiple generations of families in their careers. “These instruments will continue to be passed on through the next generations, and people knowing that they came from a community fundraising effort, I think, is really special.”