By Vanessa Broadbent (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: July 16, 2014
The third annual Cruise-In took place this past Saturday at Mill Lake. The event featured live music, children’s activities, and of course, classic cars. There were well over 1,000 attendees, who braved blistering heat to admire the nearly 700 cars, and enjoyed the performances by bands Robyn and Ryleigh, Inner Wild, and Topaz.
It was the first year that it was sponsored by Envision Financial and was combined with the Envision Financial Concert Series. Envision was also collecting food and cash donations for The Full Cupboard, their innovative community program designed to raise food, funds, and awareness for food banks in the communities where Envision Financial operates.
Kimberly Houlind, the community investment officer of Envision Financial, explained that the event organizers this year approached Envision to sponsor as it made a “nice complimentary sponsorship,” falling on the same evening of the usual Envision Concert Series.
Aside from the donations brought for The Full Cupboard, the proceeds from the event went to the Abbotsford Arts Council and the MSA Museum Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and interpreting our community’s history.
Pete and Robbie Zomar, the event coordinators, explained, “It’s our first year with [Envision Financial]. We just got on board with them, so they’re new to us and we’re doing whatever we can to promote them.
“Our charity is the MSA Museum Society and the Abbotsford Arts Council, which takes care of all of this, but we asked people to bring non-perishable items to donate,” Zomar continued.
Houlind thought the event was very successful, especially in giving The Full Cupboard more exposure.
“Building awareness is really what we need to be doing so people … know that we’re doing something that supports the community even further than the sponsorship,” he said.
The Zomars explained that another reason the event was so successful was the amount of prizes there were — a hefty list including a Ford motor worth over $7,000.
Other prizes included homemade trophies that were made out of restored car parts. Winners were announced frequently throughout the day.
The event coordinators have been more than happy with the success of the event in past years, and were especially pleased this year. Robbie Zomar said, “We’ve been lucky three years in a row, and thank you to the City of Abbotsford for allowing us to have this venue.”
