Hunt: Behind the labour of love that turned on the lights

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The lights went on as scheduled at the Pine Grove Nursing Home’s annual Festival of Lights recently: a record number of 144 trees decked and decorated for the season.

The tree lightings that traditionally signify the start of the Christmas season in Fredericton all occurred within a couple of hours on Dec. 1 – the New Brunswick legislature, Fredericton City Hall and the display at the Pine Grove Nursing Home on Fredericton’s Woodstock Road.

The Festival of Lights is a major fundraising initiative for the facility. Individuals or companies purchase and decorate the trees and there are donation boxes set up on the property, the proceeds of which pay for equipment the residents of the 70-bed facility need.

But it was almost lights out this year.

On Oct. 25, volunteers discovered thieves had stolen the copper wiring and damaged the display. Still later, 15 more sets of cables that connect the trees to the power supply were stolen.

“It was kind of a shocker, because you wouldn’t think they would come back and steal more stuff,” said Joe Dobbelsteyn.

The 86-year-old, still a licensed electrician, is one of the founders of Pine Grove. He was chairperson of the board of the non-profit organization that opened the nursing home in 1982. He’s been doing the electrical work on the Festival of Lights on a volunteer basis for 14 years, since his retirement in 2009.

This year, he had a little help.

After the theft, and thanks to the work of a dozen licensed electricians, and the hands and hearts of the students in Joell Gallant’s Grade 11 and 12 electrical wiring classes at Leo Hayes High School, the lights came on and the season arrived as scheduled.

Dobbelsteyn said there were “probably about 100 people,” on site that November day – 47 of them students in Gallant’s classes, getting some hands-on experience, some instruction and encouragement from people in the trade, and some sense of community spirit and how it feels to give back.

The 35-year-old Gallant, a fully licensed electrician since 2012 and a teacher of skilled trades at Leo Hayes for the past two years, got involved in the Pine Grove project at the urging of his wife Becky, also a teacher at Leo Hayes.

He drove by on a Sunday afternoon and spoke to Dobbelsteyn about how he and his students might help.

With the support of principal Kendra Frizzell, he ordered a school bus, and called electrical supply companies in town  – Rexell, Graybar Canada, the Eddy Group and Bird-Stairs – soliciting donations of materials that, in the end, added up to about $4,000.

“All of them said: ‘Yep, what do you need?’” said Gallant. NB Power got involved. Electricians stepped up. On Thursday, Nov. 9, a dozen licensed electricians and 47 students converged on Pine Grove. The kids were there for three hours, the electricians for four – Dobbelsteyn longer than that – and “by 12:45, it lit right up,” said Gallant.

“The kids were really nervous, but the people who were on site teaching were really gracious and patient,” said Gallant. It was he who put the licensed tradesmen in charge of groups of six or seven students performing tasks that were “right at the right level … not too complex. At the beginning, they were really nervous. At the end, they asked me if they could do it again.”

Gallant strolled through with his wife, Becky, and two children, Jack, six and Charlotte, last Friday night. It wasn’t just the hot chocolate that made him feel warm all over.

“It made me proud,” said Gallant. “That was a big thing for them to do. I was very happy to be a part of leading students in something meaningful.”

“All I can do is be thankful, and the residents are more thankful than I am,” Dobbelsteyn said.