The Stratford Rotary Hospice held a dramatic reading of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol on December 8 at Avondale United Church, and $24,500 was raised during the night.
The church was nearly filled with close to 400 people in attendance to hear the dramatic reading.
“For the performers, and the readers to look out and see those seats occupied in the balcony and on the main floor, that really eggs people on when they are reading,” said Judy Maddren, one of the readers of the event and its producer.
Former CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge hosted the event, which also featured music by Dan Stacey and Kinnaris. The readers of the event included Jamie Cottle, Sarah Dodd, Austin Eckert, Ryan Erb, Dayna Manning and Maddren.
“It’s inspiring but of course if you haven’t done any readings it's also quite terrifying,” said Maddren. “Of course once you read one or two lines of the Dickens text and people understand that it is more than a story about a mean old guy, but there is also some humour involved, you notice the people relax into their seats, it's kind of like being read a story as a young child.”
Maddren hosted her first dramatic reading in 1990, and it’s reached nearly every part of the country from Whitehorse, Cape Breton, to now Stratford Ontario. In total Maddren has been involved in around 350 of the performances.
She was able to get nearly 100 percent of the event sponsored which meant all the proceeds came back to the hospice. This is especially important as the government only covers roughly 50 percent of the costs of operating the Rotary Hospice, while the other 50 percent comes from donations, and fundraisers, as there is no cost to families of loved ones attending the hospice.
“The cost we have to cover each year is around a million dollars,” said Lucie Stuart, the director of fund development and stewardship at the Rotary Hospice. “To think we raise that much money from this community is amazing. It goes to show the power of many, there are some people who can donate more, while some people bought a ticket to the show to support the hospice, but it all added up.”
For Maddren, she knows personally about the work done at the Stratford Rotary Hospice as her mother passed away at the hospice in April.
“My big takeaway is, and one of my nieces mentioned that she was worried about going to visit my mom in the hospice because it is a house of death,” Maddren said. “When she came in and saw my mother and experienced the hospice, she said actually it’s a house of life.”
“We really try to not refer to the hospice as a facility,” said Stuart. “We call our hospice home. It belongs to the community who helped raise money to build it and the community continues to donate so we can be here.”
