SANDRA M STANWAY
Brooks Bulletin
HALO Air Ambulance flew to Brooks on Friday to accept a $275,000 donation over three years from Inter Pipelines.
“We’re making sure that our commitment is spanning all the layers of where our employees, their families and their community’s are,” said Kyle DeGruchy, Inter Pipeline’s senior vice president of transportation.
“There’s always been a partnership there. It’s about expanding it and continuing to support the work that they do. It’s not so much about one and done. There’s always a need for ongoing funding. This is really a long term partnership as opposed to a moment in time,” he said.
“We’re really excited to have them on board at this level. I mean, $75,000 a year is a massive amount and I think more importantly the commitment to multi-year partnerships is really what makes a difference, right?
“It makes planning and organizing and knowing exactly where we stand that much more secure and ultimately that’s what we need is to have predictable and stable funding,” said Paul Carolan, CEO of HALO.
Next month HALO will bring a second helicopter medical helicopter online, however, they will continue to crew one and use the second when one is down for maintenance, a gap that has needed to be filled.
Carolan said the second helicopter will be branded HALO for the first time in the company’s history.
“When you see it in the sky, it’ll be very obvious. It’s different colours.”
Seeing the Inter Pipeline logo that is affixed to the helicopter, DeGruchy said it’s cool to see.
He added that it was also “cool” to listen to Carolan and the HALO people talk about how much the funding means to them and its impact.
“Just hearing it firsthand and being a part of, you know, a lot of great companies here (while pointing to other company logos) that clearly see it the same way as us, it’s pretty cool,” DeGruchy said.
