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Go Wild Dodgeball Tournament raises funds for great outdoors

Aside from Monica Lee’s finger injury sustained during an intense showdown on the court at East Vancouver’s Fraserview Club, the Go Wild Dodgeball Tournament looked like the most fun anybody ever had raising money.

Aside from Monica Lee’s finger injury sustained during an intense showdown on the court at East Vancouver’s Fraserview Club, the Go Wild Dodgeball Tournament looked like the most fun anybody ever had raising money.

Organizing a tournament where people chuck balls at each other to benefit the great outdoors, specifically the British Columbian branch of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), seemed a natural match for organizer Michelle Sz.

That’s not just because she plays and volunteers for the Vancouver Dodgeball League and works as a communications coordinator for CPAWS, but because of the kind of people who play dodgeball.

“I figured, well, there’s a lot of people in the league who are passionate about the wilderness and care about the environment and these are people who will go hiking, skiing, paddling — so there’s good overlap there,” Sz said during Saturday’s tournament. “So I thought, why not connect the two?”

dodgeball
Photograph by: Rebecca Blissett

CPAWS is a non-profit organization that started in Canada in 1963 with its British Columbian chapter forming in 1979. In its 52 years, it has protected Canada’s forests, waters, and parks and has not wavered from its vision to keep at least half of this country’s public lands and waters wild, said Sz, adding that the group has helped protect places such as the Tatshenshini River, Muskwa Kechika and Gwaii Haanas.

Most of the work is done not with headline-grabbing protests, but in boardrooms where long-term negotiations are worked out between governments, big industry, and indigenous peoples, Sz said. Funding supports the organization’s feasibility studies and reports, public awareness, and youth outreach program — the latter of which is especially important for an organization that relies heavily on grants and donations, as the average age of most of CPAWS donors is 75.

dodgeball
Photograph by: Rebecca Blissett

“Most people who donate are retired and they have the money, but also they’ve experienced our wilderness and they see how much of it has gone since they were young,” she said. “We think, ‘oh, trees — great!’ and don’t realize how much of it has diminished, and how quickly it’s diminishing, because we were born into this age. So really, it’s the public that needs to say we need to protect our parks, we don’t want a pipeline going through our neighbourhood — things like that.”

Sz’s prediction that wilderness protection and dodgeball would be a winning combination proved to be true, judging by how many players milled about the B.C.-CPAWS table in the gym between afternoon games as well as by the final fundraising tally of $1,000 — an amount she only had high hopes the first-time event would raise.

“It was a great success,” she said, afterwards. “… Everyone kept talking about how fun it was and many new players mentioned they want to start up a VDL team for next season.”

rvblissett@gmail.com

@rebeccablissett