INNISFAIL – After selling 4,000 tickets at $20 each there is a double winner from Innisfail’s Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church Classic Car Raffle.
Most importantly, parishioners raised about $40,000 that will go towards paying off its $700,000 building cost for its new church.
And 65-year-old classic car enthusiast Richard Kuryk has a new hot road machine – a 1978 Corvette Pace Car.
Following the sale of thousands of $20 tickets in and out of town since late spring, the winning ticket was announced by church members after mass on Oct. 2.
“Yes, we were able to sell out. We raised our goal,” said Father Curtis Berube, noting the cost for the new Catholic church build in 2019 and 2020 was $700,000. “Our loan is not finished but it’s a good step.
“I'm very grateful for the generosity of those who helped to make this happen, and for all of those who bought tickets and contributed to this cause in this way,” added Berube. “We had some parishioners who travelled around selling tickets throughout Central Alberta. They were bringing the car on a trailer and setting up at car shows and selling tickets there.”
The eventual winner was a ticket buyer who seized one even farther away.
Kuryk, who lives on an acreage in Rocky View County just southeast of Calgary, was at a car show with his wife in High River late last month and saw there was a raffle for “a church in Innisfail”. They thought it was a good cause to donate and a ticket was purchased.
A week later on Oct. 2 the couple went to a wedding south of Medicine Hat. They were driving back home and a phone call came.
“This guy asked me who I am and what not. He said, ‘well, you won the car,” said Kuryk. “I am still in disbelief. It’s such a shock. You buy these lottery tickets and put them somewhere and you never hear anything. And this one paid off; one ticket, one car.”
His last classic car was a 1960 Ford Falcon, which he “hot-rodded”; put in a Chevy big block and went to Calgary’s Race City every Friday night for Secret Street.
With that past passion, what does he say about his new mean machine, the 1978 Corvette?
“It was a pace car. There was several thousand of them made. It’s not a super rare car by any means but it's a classic,” said Kuryk, who went up to Innisfail on Oct. 2 to claim his prize to bring home to his shop. The following day he bought a cover to keep off the dust and got insurance.
“We'll probably go for a little drive of 50 or 100 miles. I think I'm going to park it and just wait. I'm certainly not going to put a lot of miles on it,” he said, adding the classic vehicle with a V8 engine is in good condition and will have it reappraised. “It’s not a powerful car. It’s not fast by any means but it was built as a sports car for driving.”
There were also secondary winners from the raffle. Dennis Beaudoin claimed the second-place prize of $2,000 cash. Third place winner Christian Giorgi won $1,000, while Kathy Fuchser was fourth and also collected $1,000.
As for the fundraising future for Innisfail’s Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church, Berube said there will be more to help pay of the building debt but with a difference.
“We are going to aim these next fundraisers with a goal of building up the parish community rather than just focusing on raising money. We want future fundraisers to be community building as well,” he said, adding monies raised will still go towards paying off the rest of the church building loan.
Berube added $2,500, about five per cent of the church’s proceeds from the classic car raffle, are being donated to the Red Deer Hospice Society. The church’s donation was made to the agency on Oct. 6.
