Generous businessman helps skier get dream gift
Stealth, the love of three daughters, and a big-hearted businessman helped a dad get the Christmas present of his dreams Sunday, an Adirondack chair made of skis.
Bill Van der Meer and his wife Karen always celebrate Christmas the day of the Canadian Birkebeiner Cross Country Ski Festival, when two of his three daughters fly in so the family can ski the 55-kilometre course together.
“I have tried unsuccessfully to have an Adirondack chair made from skis,” said Van der Meer. “I asked a friend to bid for me when I heard one was up for auction at the post-Birkie feast.”
After Christmas dinner Saturday, Van der Meer’s daughter Sierra, from Whitehorse, and her sister Kristen, from Edmonton, complained of tiredness and departed early.
Sister Heidi, from Aspen, Co., was left to put out the lights on the Christmas tree, left standing every year until after the Birkie.
The two sisters sped to the feast at the Ramada Conference Centre on Kingsway and made it in time to bid on the chair, handmade by Perry Kirchner and Jenn Werner of Totem Outfitters.
They were outbid by Tim Melton of Melcor Developments, who knew proceeds were going to the non-profit Birkebeiner Society.
But when Melton heard the daughters had wanted the chair for their dad, he suggested he donate $1,000 to the Birkie and if the sisters honoured their bid of $1,000, the chair was theirs.
“When I heard the kids wanted the chair for their dad, I felt it was the right thing to do,” said Melton, who has helped many community organizations and was recently invested into the YMCA’s Fellowship of Honour by Gov.-General David Johnston.
Van der Meer swallowed hard when the chair was presented with ribbons Sunday. He gave each daughter a bear hug.
“Unbelievable,” he said, trying out the chair.
FRAMED
Freelance photographer Leroy Schulz is as fast as his shutter and took a green toy car to be pictured with The Jacksons when they were in town last week.
Schulz has a nephew, Miguelito, who, when he was just two-and-a-half-years-old, threw a little green car into a garage piled high to the roof with boxes.
The car wasn’t found until months later. Schulz took it and has travelled the world to photograph it with people from all walks to life.
“The idea is that hundreds of people from around the will be interconnected through the green car and the fact that Miguelito exists,” says Schulz. “I will present the car to Miguelito on his 18th birthday in 2021.”
Some of the people the car has been photographed with include: Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, UN Sec.-Gen. Ban Ki-moon; Prime Minister Stephen Harper, hockey icon Gordie Howe; TV chef Gordon Ramsay, Jerry Seinfeld and Margaret Atwood.
Schulz, who met The Jacksons when they dined at Edmonton’s Sabor Devino, said: “They couldn’t have been more friendly and were intrigued by the project.”
S PECIAL CONNECTION
My plans were to attend the Veuve Clicquot in the Snow event at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge March 1-3 and enjoy champagne at an aprèsski fire on a frozen lake.
It’s a special event for me. Some years ago I was hosting wine tastings at the JPL during the Journal’s annual Christmas in November celebrations when I received a call from Paris telling me a Veuve Clicquot export director would be late in arriving and could I conduct a seminar?
I did. I was rewarded with several bottles of La Grande Dame, the house’s top champagne, which arrives with its own birth certificate.
It’s a shame to miss the party, which includes a champagne gala, but my best friend Yardley Jones that weekend is celebrating an 80-kilometre walk from New Sarepta to Edmonton he made 50 years ago after President Kennedy suggested people be more active.
Yardley has been reunited with Erika (Wanke) Lefevre, who was a 14-year-old schoolgirl when she joined him on the hike. Contact me if you’d like to cover the distance on a relay team. Olympic runners will not be given preference. Jones was never fast.
P L EAS E , NOT ROB ROY
The following weekend, I will be heading to the JPL with an army of Edmontonians, who will on Sunday, March 10 frolic at an inaugural Masquerade Charity Ball being staged by Jasper’s Rotary Club.
“You have got to come,” said my old running buddy Rich Potter, president-elect of the club. “It’s a costume party.”
Please don’t appear in Jasper again as Rob Roy. A suit is just fine.”
The event benefits several charities, including Tools for Schools, a program started in Kigali, Rwanda by two retired Jasper school teachers, Jill and Neil Fenton.
“The program instructs Rwandans how to teach in poor rural communities,” says Potter. “Several graduates are now studying at post-secondary institutions in the west.”
The Jasper Park Lodge is offering special out-of-town room rates for guests.