**NORTHERN COLLEGE NEWS RELEASE**

Northern College and Algoma University would like to extend their deepest thanks to the Timmins community for its wholehearted participation in the first annual Haunted Trail event.
The two-day celebration of all things spooky attracted over 3,500 people to the Timmins Campus, raising over nineteen thousand dollars.

“The event surpassed my expectations by far,” said organizer Nicole Gingras, Northern College’s Alumni and Foundations Officer. “We knew that we were going to get a good crowd, but we did not expect to raise that much money, we thought maybe 10,000 would have been a fair number, but we’ve been completely blown away by the level of interest from the community.”

With the help of well over 70 volunteers both Gingras and her co-organizer Emilene Dumoulin were overwhelmed by the response and dedication from participating local high schools, community groups, sponsors and partners.
“I was pleasantly surprised, actually seeing the stations that our student participants created, the amount of work that went into them and the passion they showed was inspiring,” said Dumoulin, Algoma University’s Support Services Coordinator for the Timmins Campus.

“I think that what we’ve built is a well-oiled machine and now that we’ve built the framework for this event, moving forward it is going to be bigger and better every year.”

Northern College and Algoma University would like to extend their congratulations to the winners of the favourite station contest, with first place going to the School of Horror Murder 101 (Ecole Secondaire Catholique Theriault,) second place being awarded to La MAINSons Hantée (Ecole Publique Renaissance) and third place going to The IT Factor (eFollett Bookstore.)

Northern College is committed to providing community orientated programming for its campus communities and thanks to dedicated staff and volunteers, the Haunted Trail event will likely be making a return next year.
“Northern College is pleased to demonstrate its commitment to its campus communities in creating healthy, family oriented activities such as this. While our principle role as a college is that of providing quality education to our students, we are also very much community minded; and in collaboration with our post-secondary education partner Algoma University at Timmins and several other community partners we created a fun event that was enjoyed by so many area residents,” stated Northern College President and CEO, Dr. Fred Gibbons.

“I also want to extend our collective appreciation and thank you to the many volunteers who made the Haunted Trail a resounding success.”

“It was wonderful to be part of this incredible Halloween community event and fundraiser held at the college in Porcupine,” said Algoma University President and Vice-Chancellor Asima Vezina.

” There were thousands of people- from babies to tweens to young adults and great grandparents- and everyone had so much fun; I can still hear the screams! It’s great to partner with Northern College on events like this for our community, and such a good fundraising cause where the community has helped us to raise significant dollars for student bursaries. Thank you so much to all of the hard-working volunteers that made this great event possible- I can’t wait for the next one!”

Northern College and Algoma University are pleased to announce that all of the 19,000 dollars raised will go directly back to students via various entrance bursaries designed to benefit local high school students who choose to study with Northern College and local youth groups.

Filed under: Local News