LAURIE WEIR
Evan Martin said she’d only bought the tickets for the annual YAK Youth Services duck race on Saturday but she had a feeling.
Evan said she knew she would win the $1,000 prize for first place.
“I’m blown away … I was manifesting that we had won it already,” she said, as volunteers with the organization confirmed on Sunday, July 21 during the Stewart Park Festival that she had indeed won the race.
“I told her (young daughter Eleanor) that we’d already won,” Evan said. “She said, ‘But it didn’t happen yet!’”
Evan told her daughter that the race sure did happen, “and we already won. We just got super excited about it. I kept saying, ” Ellie, we won the duck race all day yesterday and today!”
It pays to manifest, she said, but she’s not sure what they will do with their jackpot.
All three winners were from Perth with second place and $750 going to Lois MacLean and third place of $250 going to Kasey Bronkhorst.
This year 800 ducks dropped into the Tay to make their way to the Mill Street bridge.
At the fork in the river, some ducks hung a left and dropped over the little waterfall. Those that floated right, sped right along to the finish line.
The annual duck race is a fundraiser for YAK, this year bringing in $6,000 for programming, said Rachel Roth, the executive director. “That’s a good year,” she said, as the funds will go toward “mostly food. We do meals every night at the youth centre and we don’t have a funder that gives us money for food.”
Roth said they are helped by local restaurants who give them food.
She also gave a shout-out to Lanark Transportation who has been instrumental in driving YAK participants to the centre from the local schools. “It’s because of Lanark Transportation – if we didn’t have that it would be more of an issue because we are so far removed.”
The youth centre is now located at Rogers Road, something Roth said she hopes is a short-term location as their long-term goal is to find space closer to the downtown core.
“We’re very happy with the amount raised,” John Reid, chair of the YAK board of directors, said. “That’s a lot of money for our programs – like the food program and transportation program. Both of those things are priorities. Rachel has her finger on the pulse of all of that.”
There was a rush on duck sales early Sunday with 200 being sold in the few hours leading up to the race, which kicked off close to 1 p.m.
