Windsor Downtown Lions Club celebrates 100th anniversary
Group has been providing donations to people with vision issues since 1920
“We serve.”
The Windsor Downtown Lions Club is celebrating its part in living up to that motto on Thursday with 100 years of service to the community.
The Windsor Downtown Lions Club was first established on March 12, 1920, after members from Detroit came to the city hoping to expand across the border — making Windsor Canada’s first Lions Club and the first to form outside of the United States.
“The ball got rolling and everything worked out and we became the club that made Lions international,” said Windsor Downtown Lions Club president Sean Hunt.
“It’s a great story. It’s a wonderful Windsor thing and we love to rub it into our other clubs faces,” he said with a laugh.
The organization now has around 46,000 service clubs with more than 1.4 million members operating in 200 countries around the world.
For the last 100 years, the local volunteer-run club has been raising money for initiatives that help to look after the blind and visually impaired. The club gives out white canes to those who need them, provides funding support for 18 blind bowlers, and has raised funds for sight-saving equipment at the local hospital.
The club fundraises by hosting community events throughout the year, including bingos, a charity golf tournament, and its annual Steak in the Snow Barbecue and Auction, which was held on the weekend and raised about $17,000. The organization donates nearly 100 per cent of its funds raised back into the local community.
While a primary focus of the Lions Club is to help those with visual impairments, the downtown club has also fundraised for various community focused projects, including refurbishments to the ice rink at Lanspeary park and supporting youth sports.
The downtown Lions Club is also credited with its Lions Manor — a 151-unit building at Strabane Avenue and Riverside Drive that houses blind and senior citizens and has been operating for 40 years.
At that time it was a $4.5 million endeavour, making it the largest project any one Lions Club had taken on.
To celebrate its anniversary, the Windsor club raised $50,000 toward new ophthalmological equipment for Windsor Regional Hospital. The efforts were matched by the District A1 Lions Sight Conservation Foundation (also known as “Eyes Right) for a $100,000 grant to upgrade the hospital equipment at both campuses.
“We’re never really going to know how many lives it touched and how many people it helped,” Hunt said Wednesday at a news event for the grant. “But we can think and sleep at night and say, ‘We did some good things for some people.’ ”
The ball got rolling and everything worked out and we became the club that made Lions international.