The Masterpiece Angus Sale at Canadian Western Agribition in Regina was supposed to start at 1 p.m. Nov. 22. It didn’t. The assembled crowd was getting restive at 15 minutes past the appointed hour.
But all shuffling stopped and the fair’s steady din faded into the background when Grant Rolston and Scott Graham arrived. They told a tragic story.
On Nov. 17, six-year-old Kehler Stauffer of Pincher Creek, Alta., drowned after falling through the ice on a dugout at the family farm. He’d been playing with his siblings and other children who were visiting, while the adults, several of them involved in the cattle business, were talking inside.
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Family, friends, emergency crews, RCMP and many other volunteers spared no effort in a frantic four-hour search to save Kehler. He was finally located by a team of divers. It was too late.
At Agribition, Rolston announced that proceeds from the sale of the first animal in the Masterpiece sale would go to the Kehler Stauffer Water Rescue Fund, to be used for scuba gear and other emergency rescue equipment. The Stauffer family and everyone involved in the rescue effort are determined that such a tragedy not be repeated, Graham said.
When auctioneer Steve Dorran brought the hammer down, $5,750 had been raised.
Cattle are big business on the Prairies, as the scope of Agribition’s livestock events attests. But that spread-out world shrinks when producers empathize and respond to a tragedy that has befallen one of their own.
As December begins, the flurry of Christmas commercials and sales flyers will soon reach gargantuan proportions. It will be a particularly cruel and difficult time for the Stauffers, comforted though we hope they will be by donations to Kehler’s fund.
Among all those commercials and flyers will be one or two for charitable causes. Particularly intriguing for those of us with agricultural interests are the booklets from Foster Parents Plan and World Vision Fund.
They talk about children, and about how monetary donations can purchase chickens, goats, pigs, cows, beekeeping kits and even trees for children and their families in countries without the wealth we know in Canada.
Some say charity begins at home, and they can make a convincing case for it. But the beginning can lead to generosity targeted at families we know and also those we don’t.
Donations to the Kehler Stauffer Water Rescue Fund can be made at the Royal Bank or sent to Box 760, Pincher Creek, Alta., T0K 1W0. Information on gift programs through Foster Parents Plan and World Vision are available at www.fosterparentsplan.ca and www.worldvision.ca.
