The year was 1924. William Lyon Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister of Canada, the world’s first winter Olympics were held in France, IBM was founded, and Emile Bourassa started up his farm equipment dealership in Radville, SK. Bourassa originally started selling coal and wood before transitioning into selling Cockshutt, Massey Harris, and John Deere farm equipment. This year will mark the 100th anniversary of the business and unlike many dealerships nowadays, it still remains in the Bourassa family. Today, they are one of Saskatchewan’s largest New Holland dealerships.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of E. Bourassa and Sons the company has launched their first community fund to help the small towns they serve with various projects.

“We developed the $100,000 community development fund and, basically, that’s our way of saying thank you to the communities that have supported E. Bourassa and Sons over the last 100 years,” stated E. Bourassa and Sons Marketing Manager Britney Fisher.

The aim of the fund is to help support organizations in communities that have new and existing projects or need additional funding on a project in a town and trade territory that is served by E. Bourassa and Sons.

“Maybe there’s an organization that’s been saving up for a large purchase that’s been taking time and it’s just not currently feasible, that’s where we come in,” explained Fisher.

Full interview:

Depending on the project, funding amounts can range from $2,500 up to $20,000 and submissions must be in the form of a video explaining the fundraising initiative. All videos must be uploaded to YouTube with the link then shared in the application form. Video presentations should not exceed five minutes and applications must be in by (or before) May 15th at 11:59pm.

“Once the applications start coming in, we will be making a public announcement in mid June of who the lucky recipients are,” Fisher added.