Verdun optimists rally project

By P.A. Sévigny

As of this week, dozens of lucky children in eight primary schools throughout Verdun, Lachine and LaSalle will receive top-of-the-line school bags filled with assorted school supplies courtesy of Joe Quinn and a lot of his friends who belong to Verdun’s St. Lawrence Optimists Club.

“We’ve been doing this for years,” said Quinn. While driving an SUV loaded with schoolbags, Verdun’s veteran community activist said volunteers at the Dawson Community Centre helped him and a few colleagues prepare the bags after which they would all be distributed to students chosen by principals and teachers in various schools throughout the western parts of the city. “Getting the bags ready for the kids is one thing,” he said.

“Paying for them is another.”

As ever, Verdun’s Saint Lawrence Optimists Club is a small and rather select group of local philanthropists who finance their activities by selling hot dogs during the summer and home-made fruit cakes during the Christmas holidays. As the club is only 15 years old, Quinn said the Optimist club’s hot dogs and the fruit cakes have still managed to collect over $100,000 to buy schoolbags and school supplies for thousands of poor children in Montreal’s west-end.

“Come see us next week outside the Loblaw’s on Nuns’ Island,” he said. “We’ll be selling hot dogs...lots of hot dogs.”