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Scouts to hold torchlight parade through Gibsons

On Saturday, Feb.
scouts
Members of the 6th Roberts Creek Scout Group with their torches made in preparation for the Torchlight Parade event.

On Saturday, Feb. 22, members of Scouting on the Sunshine Coast will honour the birthdays of the Scouting movement’s founder, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, and his wife, Lady Olave Soames Baden-Powell, the Chief Girl Guide, with a Torchlight Parade along Gibsons Way.

Scouts and their leaders will rally at Sunshine Coast Self-Storage on Venture Way at 5:30 p.m. and start marching at 6 p.m. to their end destination at Gibsons Way and North Road. Along the way, the Scouts will collect donations of food or cash for the St. Bartholomew’s Food Bank. As it welcomes the arriving Scouts, Food Bank organizers will open their doors and offer a tour of the operation that supports the most needy and vulnerable in the Coast’s population.

Food donations can also be dropped off ahead of the Torchlight Parade at IGA Gibsons and outside SuperValu until Feb. 22.

Anyone interested in Scouting or wishing to help celebrate this anniversary is invited to watch the parade as it travels along Gibsons Way, or join the Scouts at St. Bart’s at about 6:30 p.m. for the “indoor campfire” and hot chocolate. Donations for the Food Bank are welcomed at every stage of the procession. See www.6robertscreekscouts.ca for more information on the Torchlight Parade.

On the 163rd anniversary of Lord Baden-Powell’s birth, parade organizers note that the Scouting movement he founded in 1907 continues to teach the outdoor skills, social values and code of ethics that were the core of the original Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements. In recent years, Scouts Canada started accepting girls as members. There are currently two Scout Groups on the Coast, in Roberts Creek and Gibsons.

For more information on the Coast Scouting movement, see www.1stgibsons.ca or www.6robertscreekscouts.ca, or call Katharine at 604-885-2282.

– Submitted