Two Bragg Creek community groups are celebrating Valentine’s Day to ensure local seniors have a chance to stay in the community they love.
The Bragg Creek Ladies Auxiliary and the Bragg Creek Seniors Housing Society (BCSHS) are teaming up for a Valentine’s Day event Feb.12. The western dinner and dance will feature a prime rib buffet and music from Dick and the Coachmen.
Carol Scarratt, a director with the BCSHS, said the event at the Bragg Creek Community Centre is an important local initiative to support the elderly.
“We’re fairly new, just a couple of years old,” she said of the BCSHS. “We’ve decided to get going on a wonderful project to initiate housing for our seniors here in Bragg Creek. Right now we don’t have anywhere for them to go locally, other than the home they’re in, when they a reach a time of life when they really need things to be a little easier for them.”
It’s not difficult to see why somebody would want to live in Bragg Creek. It’s a picturesque spot nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that moves at a leisurely pace. With no seniors’ home currently in place locals usually have to leave the hamlet once they reach an age where they need additional care and support.
Scarratt confirmed she and the other members of the BCSHS really want to change that.
“This project is really going to the heart of the community,” she said. “Ever since I moved here 30 years ago I was always very concerned and saddened by the fact as people got older they had to move into the city. Luckily, a group of like-minded people has got together and we’re just so fortunate that we can go ahead with such a great project.”
According to the housing group’s web site www.BCSHS.com the Bragg Creek area is home to 3,500 residents with 600 of these people being seniors. The proposed seniors facility took its first big step forward when local landowner Dick Koetsier donated about three acres within the hamlet to the project last fall.
The BCSHS would like to build a 16-unit seniors home to open sometime in 2012, but the construction schedule depends on securing the necessary funding. Scarratt, who is coordinating the Valentine’s Day western dinner and dance, said both the BCSHS and the Bragg Creek Ladies Auxiliary were successful in raising funds for their organizations last September with a Motown fundraiser. Teaming up again just made sense.
She characterized Bragg Creek as a community supportive of these charity nights out and is confident they will be out again Saturday night. Doors open at 5 p.m. at the Bragg Creek Community Centre. The catered western buffet get’s going at 6 p.m. Dick and the Coachmen will kick off the dancing at about 7:30 p.m.
Some tickets remain at $50 each and tables of eight can be reserved for $400. Call the Bragg Creek Business Centre to pay by phone at (403) 949-2333.
