Post-Event Report

Thank You, Kawartha Lakes

The 2026 Kawartha Lakes Fall Run delivered $35,000 to the Kawartha Lakes Spirit of Christmas — and ended with an award nobody had won before.

BOBCAYGEON, ON — Performance Boat Club Events Inc. (PBCE) closed its 2026 season on Saturday, October 3 with the Kawartha Lakes Fall Run, presented by Birch Point Marina. The fleet ran the Trent-Severn from Bobcaygeon to Fenelon Falls, through Buckhorn and down to Bridgenorth and back. By the end of the auction and awards dinner that night, the day had delivered $35,000 to the Kawartha Lakes Spirit of Christmas.

The person best placed to say what that means said it herself:

What $35,000 Does

The Kawartha Lakes Spirit of Christmas began in November 2000 at Fenelon Falls Secondary School, where educational assistant Susan Sainsbury noticed students arriving in the same clothes, or without a lunch. She has led the program ever since — twenty-six years, and 529 families supported in that time. In a typical year now it reaches roughly fifty.

The name undersells it. The hampers go out in December — food and gifts both, delivered by hand — but the work runs all twelve months. Between Decembers the program covers what a stretched family cannot: a hockey registration, a season of soccer, so a kid does not have to sit out. When fire took the Princess Apartments in Bobcaygeon in May 2024 and thirty people from sixteen households lost everything, the money moved in two days.

Funds are directed through the Bobcaygeon Lions Club, which receives them on the program’s behalf. PBCE is one supporter among many — Birch Point Marina has backed the program since its earliest days, and brought it to the water in 2020 when this run was created.

With this year’s $35,000, PBCE has now donated $208,000 on the program’s behalf since October 2020.

The Awards

Club president Jeff Devolin and event coordinator Ana Figueiredo handed out the hardware.

Winning hand — Ray Bonner. First place went to a new member on his first run with the club. A good night to pick.

Second — Dave Grant. Third — Dave Turnbull.

Best Captain — Matt Ebsworthy. Matt ran the under-65 pace boat on Saturday, which means he spent most of the day out in front of half the fleet before the award came his way.

The Birch Point Brotherhood Award — Jeff Devolin. The night’s last presentation was not on the schedule. Club members and sponsors Brett Wells and Danny Verrilli of Stone Link founded a new award this year and handed the first one to the club president. The citation reads: for being an incredible human who pours out his heart to help everyone. Thank you for what you do to make this club feel like home.

There is a neatness to it that is hard to miss. Jeff had spent the day running the fleet as Event Marshal, the evening running the auction, and the past twelve years running a dinner that started in 2014 with twenty-four people in a room. The award is named for his own marina. His own members founded it, and gave it to him first.

The Spirit of Christmas Dinner has grown from those twenty-four to 125 at the auction and awards dinner on Saturday night — well past the eighty-five to a hundred the club had been quoting. The boat run was added in 2020. Both halves now fill the room.

On the Water

Twenty-five boats registered. The fleet left Birch Point at 10:00 a.m. behind two pace boats, split by speed after the glory laps around McConnell Island, with a helicopter overhead. The Bobcaygeon Fall Fair parade stepped off at 10:30 the same morning, which put the fleet through Lock 32 with the whole village already downtown. It passed clean, both ways, and the lock ran on schedule.

Spectators noticed:

“My hubbie and I were in pure heaven watching this — also had fun on our sea doos on your wakes.”

— Allison J Talbot-Zitounis

“Incredible.. I just love those boats.”

— Cindy Miller

The recap reel passed 3,700 views in its first sixteen hours, and spectators have been sending in their own footage since.

Thank You

To our members. You are the reason there is a club to run. You bring the boats, the crews, the auction items and the bidding, across five runs a season. This one closed the year, and you closed it well.

To our sponsors. The Kawartha Lakes Fall Run is presented by Birch Point Marina, with the support of PBCE’s 2026 season sponsors: Double R Performance, Edwards Mazda, Hull Life Insurance, Dock Links, MD Marine Insurance, CWM Waste Management, Brett and Sherri Wells, Angels Touch Massage – Paradise Spa and Tanning, BMLE Construction, Nordic Group, Stone Link, C-TOW, Enbridge, TRC Dave Grant, The Gravity Group, Fawcett Excavating, and Seedlink. Sponsorship is what lets net proceeds go where they are meant to go.

To the communities on the route. Bobcaygeon, Fenelon Falls, Buckhorn and Bridgenorth opened their docks, their locks and their shorelines to us — on a weekend when Bobcaygeon had a fall fair of its own to run. Our thanks to the Bobcaygeon Fall Fair for sharing the village with us, to the lockmaster and staff at Lock 32, to the Bobcaygeon Lions Club, and to C-TOW and the OPP for a day that ran without incident.

And to Susan Sainsbury, who has been doing this quietly since November 2000 and will be loading hampers again in December.

“This one is close to home — it is the community we live in and run our business in, and the families it helps are our neighbours.”

— Jeff Devolin, President, Performance Boat Club Events Inc.

See you in June.

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About Performance Boat Club Events Inc.

Performance Boat Club Events Inc. (PBCE) has run charity poker runs on Ontario’s lakes since 2005 and was incorporated as an Ontario not-for-profit in 2009. Based in Bobcaygeon, Ontario, the club runs a five-event season under the banner POWER · SPEED · COMMUNITY · CHARITY. Over 22 consecutive seasons, PBCE and its charitable arm, Performance Boat Club Charities, have donated more than $1.2 million to more than 25 Ontario organizations, earning a national charitable rating in the top 10% while maintaining a zero-loss safety record.

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