MANITOULIN—A long time and dedicated member of the Manitoulin Snowdusters Snowmobile Club, Brad Middleton, will be receiving a Lifetime Achievement recognition from the Sudbury Trail Plan group, having been nominated by the Snowdusters.
“Brad (Middleton) is a very valuable member of our club and has been for many years,” stated Doran McVey, president of the Manitoulin Snowdusters. “He’s a very good member of our club. One area that he has been very good at with helping us is that when there have been problems arise, such as with trails and new legislation, he has always helped to address these concerns and help smooth things over.”
“He has an area of trails from Gore Bay to Evansville that he and Floyd Orford look after,” said Mr. McVey. “Since Brad moved to the Island he has been very involved in the Snowdusters, and for instance he has always helped out at our fundraiser fish dinners. And over the years he has made award presentations on behalf of the club. And in many cases he has been our spokesperson and has always done a great job.”
The Lifetime Achievement Recognition Award, is new this year. “This recognition is to the person or persons who have demonstrated over many, many years a true dedication to the sport of snowmobiling in the Sudbury and District areas. These pioneers of our great past time have through their efforts built our infrastructure into a world class trail network. They have led us in developing system and an administrative procedures the envy of most similar organizations. We cannot thank these individuals enough.”
Richard Bleskie, operations coordinator and vice president of the Sudbury Trail Plan (OFSC District 12), told the Recorder “this new recognition award is just being developed. We wanted clubs in the Sudbury Trail Plan to put forward the name of a person who fits the criteria. For this year we kicked off the award by recognizing someone from each of the clubs. In the future we will probably cut this back to one or two people per year, although we haven’t fully developed this as of yet. We will also be further developing a list of criteria for clubs to determine a nominee. We will not be handing out any specific trophy however will come up with a certificate or something.”
“With this award we are recognizing the trail builders and pioneers,” said Mr. Bleskie. “We have hundreds of member-volunteers in the 10 clubs within the district, which takes in a very large area. I know Brad has done a great deal of work on Manitoulin, and before that he worked-volunteered for the Walden snowmobile club for years before that. And he has done a lot of our legal work (Sudbury Trail Plan group) over the years.”
Mr. Bleskie explained the criteria for winning this award is that persons nominated must fit into one of the following groups but not necessarily all: been a volunteer for 15 plus years or been on the executive of a club for 10 plus years and has volunteered many hours; located and helped build trails to destinations; helped develop policy or procedure, developed or been part of a group to develop something new which was adopted by the clubs/association or district; has helped move the clubs/associations of the district into a new way of operating; and was a founding member of their respective clubs or associations.”
Murray Baker, president of the Sudbury Trail Plan (STP) District 12, told the Recorder on Sunday, “each club in the district is recognizing long term members who have helped the club move ahead, and the Snowdusters club recognized Brad (Middleton) this year.” He explained the group has a ‘Volunteers in Action’ committee that gets together and looks at the nominations for each club for several awards, like the family of the year, and youth member of the year. For this award in year one we had the clubs nominate one member from each club in the district.”
“Brad is one of the guys who attends the OFSC convention each year, and is a calming voice among volunteers, and he has been with the Manitoulin Snowdusters (and previously with the Walden club). He is a great volunteer.”
