The Rotary Club of the Battlefords will be celebrating their centennial anniversary by bringing in world-famous Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield.
Hadfield will give a presentation to high school students at the North Battleford Comprehensive High School on April 24, 2020. Then in the evening, he will be the guest speaker at the Rotary’s Centennial “Out of this World” celebration.
Event co-chair Warren Williams says they’re thrilled with the response and excitement from the community about the event.
“We think this is going to be ‘the event’ of 2020 in the Battlefords and we’re excited to have Col. Hadfield come to our community.”
Williams says he’s surprised the club was able to keep it a secret for so long as they had booked Col. Hadfield in July.
“I’m amazed it kept as quiet as it did because part of our value proposition to our major sponsors was to include them in our announcement.”
Innovation Credit Union and Battlefords Tribal Council helped the event acting as major sponsors with each contributing $25,000. A centennial event had been in the works for the past two years but the club didn’t land on the guest speaker until earlier in the year. Col. Hadfield was chosen after several members had seen him speak at other events across the country.
The actual anniversary of the Rotary Club’s is April 26 but Williams says the moved the celebration to the Friday to accommodate the students’ schedules. He says the Comprehensive High School auditorium is able to hold about 1,000 students and the event is still in the planning stages.
“We came up with the idea of introducing Col. Hadfield to our area students which increased the price of his speaking fee a little bit but not that much. It allowed us to go out to our business community and get sponsorships for it because the value proposition was in the student engagement and not the gala.”
Tickets are only available to Rotary Club of the Battlefords members at this time but will be available to the public in early January. A maximum of 350 tickets will be available for the gala and can be purchased through the Dekker Centre.