“Community Support for Peterborough’s Only Mosque” crowdfunding campaign screen capture
It sickens decent Canadians to watch the news of Peterborough mosque arson (a suspected hate crime) and knowing the fire has caused ~$80,000 in estimated smoke damage. Peterborough mayor Daryl Bennett, MP Maryam Monsef and Imam Shazim Khan came together quickly to condemn the attack and the mayor said the attack was “totally out of character”. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also issued a statement in response to multiple recent incidents, “Diversity is Canada’s strength. These vicious and senseless acts of intolerance have no place in our country and run absolutely contrary to Canadian values of pluralism and acceptance.”
Sometimes darkness gives people a chance to shine light. A crowdfunding project entitled “Community Support for Peterborough’s Only Mosque” was quick in raising $110,536 (far exceeding the upper estimate of the repair costs) from 2097 contributors in just 2 days, all “without waiting to be asked” (to quote the five eloquent words by U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson’s 2011/09/11 tribute (CBC video) at the town of Gander, N.L.).
P.S. For the record, I like to acknowledge Duane Rousselle‘s awesome work by quoting a 2015 Nov 15 Huffington Post Canada article,
“Duane Rousselle, a Peterborough resident, quickly started a FundRazr page on Sunday to encourage those “of all or no faiths” to help the Muslim community rebuild the mosque.
Donations immediately started flooding in, totalling roughly $6,600 in two hours.
“It is heartwarming, to say the least,” Rousselle wrote on his personal Facebook page, about these initial figures.
Four hours later, the campaign hit the $20,000 mark — and reached over 25 per cent of its total fundraising goal.“
On Nov 18, 2015, Duane gave the following public Facebook update plus some feedback to the online fund raising tool Fundrazr.
“The numbers are in:
Total amount raised before fees = $110,536.35
Total combined FundRazr/WePay fees removed = $9,361.47
Total amount remaining after fees = $101,174.88”
P.P.S. In a previous post, I wrote about my tiny volunteering work in “Thanks from Office of Canada’s Veterans Ombudsman – Without waiting to be asked” not to “brag” but simply trying to inspire others to volunteer and to help “without waiting to be asked”. Just like Duane, we can all do what we can, big or small.
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Kempton - ideas Revolutionary 
Thank you.
Duane, My pleasure to try to shine light on this story. I know you don’t see it as a “big” thing but I would say each “small act” like yours, it really plays important roles in our collective “war against ISIL”. What you did was another “flower” we shoot at the seemingly invincible “armour of hate” that ISIL want to build around peaceful Muslim citizens against citizens of their respective countries. With your small acts and others’, we are showing the world we can live peacefully with Muslims.
Thanks again for your great work!