The St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation held its last fundraising event of the year last weekend, with a good showing at their Festival of Trees.

That was a full weekend affair, with auctions selling off items to support the foundation and community events to raise awareness.

Executive Director Lori Gervais details the weekend.

"We started with Saturday in the Estevan Kinettes marketplace and then Saturday night we had our Festival of Trees Dinner Gala and we had some fantastic food catered by EB's [Catering]. We had the Romantics out to entertain which was fantastic. Everybody loved the music and we had lots of people up dancing. Then we did some auctions and some silent auctions and made a lot of money for the hospital foundation."

While the total amount raised isn't known yet, Gervais says she's confident the weekend was a successful one.

"It did feel like the auctions went fairly well and people enjoyed themselves and spent some money on our raffles and that sort of thing. Then Sunday, our hometown family Fun Day, sponsored by the [Estevan] Mercury and we had people all over town enjoying events free with donations. We had kids swimming and going to movies and bouncy castles and hanging out with the Bruins and all kinds of fun things all over town."

 Gervais says she did receive some positive feedback about the event and was happy to see plenty of people come out.

"I think our auctions went as well as could be expected. You never know how things are going to go depending on the economy and people's financial situations, but it felt like everything went for very good prices. As always, the Community stepped up and supported us when we asked them to and our trees sold, they were beautiful trees done by Tara Daoust again this year, and all of our silent auction items are donated by all the local small businesses. Our trips also sold at great prices. So I think we're going to have a very successful event." 

Gervais thanked all of the volunteers and sponsors who helped to make the event possible.

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