A Trenton REALTOR® mixed all the right ingredients and turned the National Air Force Museum into a vibrant, Down East Kitchen Party, raising $114,000 for her local hospital and a non-profit organization that supports ill and injured Canadian Armed Forces members, veterans, first responders, and their families.
Lorraine O’Quinn, event organizer and leader of Team O’Quinn, Royal Lepage ProAlliance Realty, brought some of the most renowned traditions from her home province to Ontario for a night. The 300 attendees bid on silent and live auctions while experiencing an authentic Newfoundland kitchen party with all the trimmings in “a sea of plaid and jeans.”
Music? Check. O’Quinn flew in The Navigators from Newfoundland to get everyone’s feet moving and arms flying. Kissing the cod? Of course. People got in there and puckered their lips to show respect when they met the cold mouth of a cod upraised to their faces. Newfoundland Screech ceremony? Done. Partygoers downed shots of the fiery liquor and then chased the taste with savory hunks of baloney.
“The museum came alive as we turned it into this magical place that portrayed what the Maritimes is all about,” says O’Quinn, who grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, and has been a REALTOR® for 25 years. “I get a lot of energy when doing things for others in the community, it inspires me and it really lights a fire in my belly.”
Auction items included a trip to Gander to see the hit musical Come From Away in the town whose people inspired it, a trip to a W Hotel in Los Angeles, and many other sought-after items.
Money raised at the event is being dispersed equally between the Trenton Memorial Hospital Foundation (TMHF) and Wounded Warriors Canada. O’Quinn chose the hospital because “it’s small and everyone in the community needs it, and the Wounded Warriors is close to my heart because my husband Tom, my son, my cousins and my uncle have all served and I really understand what our soldiers have gone through mentally and physically.”
O’Quinn, who is an honorary Colonel with the Canadian Forces, expects the hospital will use the donation to help pay for a mammogram machine.
It took O’Quinn and her team of volunteers several months to organize this year’s Kitchen Party, which is the third, and they just keep getting bigger and better while raising more funds. The first, in 2019, drew 210 people and raised $47,000. The next, in 2020, attracted 220 people and $54,000 in funds.
When O’Quinn was growing up in Newfoundland, she says she didn’t go without the basics for living but she knew that her family had a relatively low income. It has motivated her to do volunteer work that “gives other people the things that maybe I didn’t have then, and doing so creates this ripple effect, I’ve found, so that they do good things for others, too.”
Earlier this year, she saw an ice cream bike for sale in Alberta, bought it and had it shipped to Trenton, where she uses it to put a smile on people’s faces with free ice cream. She suffered heart problems in 2019 in the Sahara Desert while doing a volunteer hike for the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation and ended up in a hospital in Marrakesh, Morocco, for treatment. Now, her goal is to raise $10,000 for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and lose 25 pounds “to help and inspire other people who have trouble managing their health.” She has also been a Wish Granter with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Eastern Ontario.
She’s already contemplating how to make next year’s Kitchen Party bigger, better and more brash with even more people in Newfoundland style.
“Volunteering and philanthropy have been like a calling for me,” says O’Quinn, 56, who has been recognized as being in the “Top 1%” with Royal Lepage in Canada from 2010 to 2022. “I feel born to do it, helping other people. What I want to be remembered for in the end is doing good for my family and the community.”
