Shirli-Gene Sadowick was overcome with emotion at the Festival of Trees live auction.
Bea's Tree, a three-foot silver Christmas tree which 104-year-old Bea Dezell bought in the 1950s for her brownie/girl guide Christmas parties, was auctioned off for a record $52,500 to Janet Holder, who won the friendly bidding war with Jim Rustad.
The record bid Friday night touched off roars of appreciation from the sold-out crowd of 300 at the Civic Centre and helped drive the live auction receipts of the 19-year-old event to an all-time high. More than $310,000 was raised, all of which will be donated to the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation to pay for medical equipment to be used at UHNBC.
"I was just in tears, I get so emotional even now, thinking about it," said Shirli-Gene Sadowick, chair of the Festival of Trees committee. "This tree was in my mom's (Shirley Gratton's) garage sale and my mom gave it to me. She bought it from the Spinners and Weavers Guild at Studio 2880 because she knew the history about it and it took us a few months to figure it out and we decided to do something about it because it has history behind it and we put in a nice vase and named it Bea's Tree. It just evolved from there."
Bea Dezell bought the aluminum tree from Perry's Pharmacy in Prince George in 1953. Since it became part of the live auction in 2004, the tiny tree has raised more than $125,000. The winning bidder gets to keep it only through the holiday season and then has to return it for next year's live auction.
"It's showing that people are giving, and they're not getting anything for it," said Sadowick.
A half-hour before Bea's Tree was sold, Brent Marshall shelled out $40,000 for the Finning Canada tree, Dozing Off, which featured a horizontal tree set amid the outline of a dazzling Christmas light tractor. Two other trees -- A Very Good Year (sponsored by Marcotte Kerrigan Real Estate Lawyers) and Dream by the Fire (Tropical Pool and Spa) each sold for $10,000. Marshall's bid was a record-setter as well, until the gavel fell on the Bea's Tree bidding.
Last year's live auction raised about $180,000 and the previous all-time high for the evening was in the $200,000 range, according to Spirit of the North chair Darren Masse.
"It was an amazing evening," said Masse. "There aren't many times in a lifetime you can have individuals get together and get so passionate about raising funds for the community and enhancing health care in the north.
"I'm super appreciative of everybody there and all the work that went into it from the volunteers. It was a great show of support from the whole community."
The live auction's fund-an-item bidding raised $103,000 to pay the bulk of the cost for a mini C-arm, a machine that allows surgeons easier access to patients undergoing a fluoroscopy to produce a live moving X-ray image during orthopedic surgery. The machine enables doctors to view on a high-resolution computer monitor the area where they are inserting wires or plates into bones. It is used to pinpoint the degree of angulation, which makes it easier for surgeons to accurately set broken bones. The $125,000 piece of equipment is required an average 20 times per month at UHNBC. The Northern Health Authority has agreed to fund the remainder of the cost.
Bids on Christmas trees, wreaths, ginger bread houses and other displays entered in the silent auction have yet to be compiled and will add to the record total for the Festival of Trees, which wraps up Sunday.
"It looked like the trees were going for really good prices so we're quite excited about that as well," said Masse.
The committee is already making plans for the 20th annual Festival of Trees, scheduled from Nov. 23-Dec. 1, 2013. Sadowick said the Festival continues to thrive every year because of the dedication of a small army of 350 volunteers.
"When we have a successful night like [Saturday night] it energizes the volunteers," said Sadowick. "It takes us five long days to set this up, and then we work for the next 10 days. Everybody's a volunteer, and we have probably 30 on our core committee who work hard all year long. We're all family and it's so important. We call it our festival family."
