P.G.’s Dave Horton awarded Medal of Good Citizenship

A Prince George man is among 31 British Columbians to receive a Medal of Good Citizenship for outstanding service during the pandemic.

Dave Horton is one of the directors of the Ness Lake Bible Camp and was immediately put out of work when COVID-19 hit.

Rather than sit idly by, he began putting together free events that would be permitted by Northern Health for the entire community.

He started by purchasing and borrowing the equipment needed to put on FM transmitted drive-in movies, playing his first free showing on the side of the local Canadian Tire for 200 vehicles.

Seeing that his community was hungry for safe ways to gather he started regular movie nights, drive-in trivia and kids drive-in trivia nights.

He then offered his technical services to any person or group that needed help to make their events happen. This led to weddings, funerals, church services, bridal showers, birthday parties, graduation ceremonies, annual general meetings and more.

Horton also created three free citywide events (Candy Cruise, The Family Day Adventure Cruise and The Most EGGcellent Cruise) that ranged from a Halloween drive-thru to massive scavenger hunts.

These events combined, engaged hundreds of volunteers, raised over $10,000 for charities, created $75,000 of economic impact, safely entertained over 9,000 participants and gave opportunity for dozens of companies and non-profits to give back to the community safely.

Horton has to support six children, of which four are adopted and one has severe disabilities, “so the financial impact has been hard on them,” B.C.’s Honours and Awards Secretariat said in a statement.

“He did not allow his own financial struggles to stop him from spending most of his free time doing events throughout the pandemic.”

With the help of a local city councillor and friend, Horton hosted the first approved outdoor community concert called Rooftop Rock which had over 7,000 attend.

In total he hosted 65 free activities and events that were all vetted and approved by Northern Health.

“When you consider that in northern B.C. there are not as many opportunities to be around people as there are in the south, we are most fortunate that this gentle and humble man almost single handedly kept the community from feeling much of the isolation and impact that COVID-19 brought with it,” the Secretariat said.