{"id":17348,"date":"2017-05-24T15:52:52","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T19:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17348"},"modified":"2017-05-31T12:13:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T16:13:37","slug":"relay-for-life-has-personal-meaning-for-renaissance-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/relay-for-life-has-personal-meaning-for-renaissance-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Relay for Life has personal meaning for Renaissance community"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emma Kocsis is carrying the baton for her mother.
\nHaving lost her mother to cancer in 2013, the ESC Renaissance student was eager to become involved in a cause that touched her family personally and just such an opportunity presented itself this year as the southwest Aurora school decided to spearhead their very own Relay for Life.
\nEach year, the French Catholic school\u2019s Pastoral team has organized events to help the community, usually holding an annual fashion show with the proceeds going towards a different cause each year. This year, however, they decided to do something new and different, an activity with the potential to involve the entire Renaissance community.
\n\u201cI have always done Relay for Life in the community and it has always been very important to me,\u201d says teacher Chantal Bertrand, who lost her own mother 16 years ago to cancer, spurring her to join a local team. \u201cI have always had the dream of doing it in the school and this year we decided we would try and make that dream a reality.\u201d
\nThey are doing more than making it a reality. Dividing themselves up into teams each charged with different tasks ranging from marketing to developing fun activities to keep everyone occupied and having fun during the 12-hour relay, the team initially set a fundraising target for themselves of $21,000.
\nBy this past Friday afternoon, they had well surpassed that goal, standing at $25,835-and-counting for the Canadian Cancer Society, with a revised goal of $30,000 with over a week to go.
\n\u201cWhen we put [our fundraising thermometer] up at the beginning, a lot of students said, \u2018We\u2019re never going to reach $21,000! There is no way we can do that,\u2019\u201d says Ms. Bertrand with a chuckle.
\nWith their initial fundraising hurdle cleared, the students are energized to also carry that baton across the $30,000 line by the time they begin the Relay next Friday, June 2, at 11 a.m.
\n\u201cWe made an Instagram account for Relay,\u201d says student Chloe Ruest, Captain of Marketing for Renaissance\u2019s Relay for Life. \u201cWe have a new person [featured] every holding up a sign saying, \u2018I am participating in Relay because\u2026\u2019 and I put in the caption on why and their reasoning is either to raise awareness or because a family member has been impacted by cancer.\u201d
\nThere are few people in the Renaissance community \u2013 and the wider local community for that matter \u2013 whose lives have not been touched by cancer in some way and, of course, the students leading the June 2 Relay are no exception.
\n\u201cEveryone can say they know someone who has been affected by cancer, so we really know how to incorporate the parts where we\u2019re going to have fun, but these are the reasons why we\u2019re doing it and the whole goal of why we are doing it,\u201d says Emma.
\nAdds Stephane Arcand, Captain of the Ceremony Committee, \u201cIt is such an important cause, especially since the Cancer Society has made so much progress already. I think it is important for our school to find a way to unite because it is a fun activity that unites us and it is always good to have more and more activities that unite the school. Not all the students like to participate in events, so I feel this is a good opportunity for the students to come together and really contribute to something that is important.\u201d
\nBeyond the Relay itself, the students will facilitate a number of fun activities to not only keep spirits high during the 12-hour event, but also keep those all-important fundraising dollars rolling in. Among the activities on tap are a students vs. teachers basketball game, yoga sessions, an RV for gaming, an RV transformed into a photo booth, an on-site ice cream truck, fundraising head-shaving, and the creation of a \u201cMural of Dreams\u201d which students will paint throughout the day, becoming a permanent fixture in the halls of Renaissance.
\nEach Relay, regardless of location, always begins with a Survivors\u2019 Lap for those who have beaten the disease and those who are in remission. While the bulk of the day\u2019s activities are open to the school community for security reasons, students invite all survivors to come and participate in the opening lap.
\nIf you or someone you know might be interested in participating in the Survivors Lap, or if you are a business who would like to help sponsor the Relay, contact Ms. Bertrand at cbertrand@cscmonavenir.ca.
\n\u201cIt is about coming together as a team, as a community, as a school and [the students] being able to make a difference in the world,\u201d says Ms. Bertrand. \u201cIt is beyond just the community here in Aurora, it goes way beyond. If they can see their actions can actually make a difference maybe it is going to motivate them, once they leave this school, to make a difference and get involved in stuff as they get older and decide what they want to do with their lives and always get involved with causes that are close to their heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

To support Renaissance\u2019s Relay for Life, visit www.relayforlife.ca\/renaissance.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Emma Kocsis is carrying the baton for her mother. Having lost her mother to cancer in 2013, the ESC Renaissance student was eager to become involved in a cause that touched her family personally and just such an opportunity presented itself this year as the southwest Aurora school decided to spearhead their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-05-25-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4vO","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 05:18:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}