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This year the Thorold Community Activities Group is celebrating its 40th anniversary, but because of Covid-19 a big celebration might not be in the cards. Dan Pelletier, the group’s executive director, says, “It’s been very tentative right now. We love to celebrate it, that’s a milestone. So we’re going to be playing it by ear and will be talking about that with the board over the next few months. “
The Thorold Community Activities Group, which offers licensed childcare as well as recreational and leisure programming for kids and adults, had its start in 1981. Says Pelletier, “Prior to 40 years ago this organization operated as a branch of the St. Catharines YMCA but it also had a local advisory board. Thorold is a very proud and independent kind of community and at the time that board felt that the Thorold community would be best served independently of St. Catharines’ management.”
Throughout the following decades, the TCAG thrived as an independent charity organization supported by the local community. Even though there had always been an informal relationship with the City of Thorold, recently that relationship has been more formalized. Says Pelletier, “The funding is secured for five years as long as we meet expectations. The city recognized they don’t want to duplicate services. We don’t want to overlap, we want to complement each other.”
Pelletier thinks it’s the local grassroots approach that has kept the group going when bigger activity groups like the YMCA have been closing locations in the Niagara region. “I think that maybe there is a right size. I think there’s certainly value in being part of something bigger at times but when it comes down to it, I know the kids, I know the families. We can move faster. We can make decisions probably a little bigger than a local affiliate of a national movement.”
Pelletier says the TCAG keeps on thriving in spite of a pandemic and he hopes to expand the group’s activities in the future. Says Pelletier, “We don’t have a fitness studio, we don’t have the space here to do it. We have been quietly looking at some options to either expand this footprint or other facilities to offer those types of programming. That could be a game changer.”
Pelletier says it’s really the local community that kept the TCAG going. He points to the group’s Honorary Board of Governors, which is a board compromised of past board members of the TCAG, that the group turns to once a year for counselling. “This is a small town within the Niagara region, but there’s still a fair bit of Thorold identity. We like to keep good relationships with everyone who comes and goes, staff and participants in our programs. We really value that relationship and keeping them involved. Because this was a big deal to put this together in a small town and to keep it going for forty plus years.”
