Saving the best of the season’s weather for last, Ontario, Canada defied the odds and showed its sunny side last weekend for the nonprofit Performance Boat Club of Canada Bruce Nicolle Memorial Poker Run—it’s final event of the year.—on Rice Lake. The club raised $30,000 for its designated Children’s Wish Foundation charity.

Last weekend’s record-setting Bruce Nicolle Memorial Poker Run capped a record-setting fundraising season for the Performance Boat Club of Canada (click image to enlarge). Photos courtesy/copyright Carl McBride/Performance Boat Club of Canada.

“The weather and the water were amazing this year,” said Meghan Brousseau, the PBBC president. “Historically, this run usually gets rain, but this weekend turned out to be one of the hottest weekends of the year.”

While a few of the high-performance catamarans, V-bottom sportboats and center consoles in the fleet experienced mechanical problems, most of the vessels in the fleet completed the run without any issues. According to Brousseau, the highlight of the run was the winding Ottanabee River course where hundreds of spectators gathered on the shoreline to watch the boats in action.

“We send a safety boat up the river before the boats start the course,” she said. “This year, the flag boat was a 32-foot Stanley Bullnose aluminum boat with three 350-hp engines. This was a first for us and the crowds of people were amazed watching an aluminum boat doing 60-plus mph.

Check out the slideshow above for more action from the final PBCC event of the season.

“Another highlight of the night was the charity auction for Children’s Wish, where we raised an event-record $30,000 for the charity,” she continued. “And more importantly, the club raised over $153,000 this year for all the charities we support, which is another record. I can’t say it enough: Our members are some of the most generous people you will ever meet and I am proud to be associated with such an incredible group.”

The PBBC board of directors will announce the organization’s 2019 schedule this fall and—as in years past—will host a member appreciation at the Toronto Boat Show on Saturday, January 19.

Said Brousseau, “The board would like to send a sincere thank-you to each and every person who supports our club and especially the volunteers who help at every event including Mary Hiley, Carol Burchall and the very talented and funny Mike Holmes, our master of ceremonies.”

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