St. John’s Anglican Church has their annual bazaar and yard sale

By Mike Riley

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

St. John's Anglican Church had their annual bazaar and yard sale on June 24 at their church hall to raise money to refurbish the accessible ramp outside the church and to continue with their usual outreach initiatives. While an official amount raised was not tabulated as of press time, Kathy Partridge, the president of the Anglican Women's Council, said they did very well and overall, she was pleased with how it all went.

The St. John's Anglican Church Bazaar and Yard Sale on June 24 was well attended, and people were lined up ready to come in at 7:30 a.m. that morning for the sale, which began at 8 a.m., according to Carol Quirk, the church's publicist.

Partridge first told Bancroft This Week about the event back in May, and said it was the first year that people could buy the items by donation as opposed to having price stickers on the individual items.

In addition to a plethora of household items, books, CDs, video cassettes, jams and baked goods, they also had a large quantity of clothing items in the lower level that they were giving away for free in an outreach program, to whomever wanted or needed them.

Quirk said the bake sale was going quite well as of 10 a.m. and that of the 22 pies they'd started out with, they had 10 left.

“We spent a whole Saturday baking all the other baked goods and then yesterday we baked all these pies. But we've had wonderful donations and it's been a great success. We have a lot of very talented people in this place,” she says.

John was looking over the pies, and told Bancroft This Week that he and his family just moved to Bird's Creek from Wilberforce last month. He thought the event was super and he ended up buying a blueberry pie.

“We're kind of new to the area, so it's nice to come by and see something else,” he says.

Partridge, Kitty and Penny were handling the free clothing outreach, and Partridge said it was going really well, as by 10 a.m. their stock was really starting to diminish.

“Basically what we did was ask our members and people they knew to chip in by going through their clothes and picking out things that were no longer applicable to them. We got lots and lots of donations and we decided we'd do it strictly free. So it's basically an outreach and I'm thrilled with the way people have responded,” she says.

Partridge said they'll definitely be doing the clothing outreach again in the fall with winter clothing items, perhaps in concert with their Loonie Auction in November.

Cheryl Grant was the organizer of the bazaar and yard sale and said that the sale would go until 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. and anything left over would be donated to local thrift shops.

“It takes in total a good week to get it all organized. So, we have people that contribute the stuff, they come in and drop it off and then we put all this together after that. The bake sale is three good days of baking and packaging and all that kind of stuff. And the jams, as a group of ladies we all get together and have a really good time. It takes two days to make that. So, when you put it all together, it's a couple of weeks work. And what we decided this year, rather than having our sale separately that we would do it all together, almost like a church bazaar,” she says.

Grant says the reason they're doing the bazaar and yard sale is to do their usual outreach initiatives and to repair the accessible access ramp outside the church.

“So, the fundraiser is toward that and it's rather expensive. We're going to go for a government grant, but in the meantime, we thought let's put it all together and see how much money we can make,” she says.

In addition to the bazaar and yard sale, they also had breakfast and lunch items for attendees, being cooked outside the church hall on a barbecue by a gentleman named Barry. Prices ranged from $1 for chips to $7 for the meal deal (hamburger or hot dog with chips and drink).

Partridge told Bancroft This Week on June 26 that the bazaar and yard sale went was really successful, although they didn't have an official total of money made at that time.

“It was a very good weekend,” she says. “Lots of camaraderie and people seemed to be happy to be able to take some items away for a nominal fee, so it was good.”