For the St. Malo chapter of Operation Red Nose (ORN), 2024 marks the fifth year that they’ve been providing safe rides throughout southeast Manitoba, helping keep everyone safer on the roads.
The annual ORN safe ride campaign will begin on November 29 and run each Friday and Saturday night for a total of six weeks, ending with New Year’s Eve.
The goal of the program is to give people the opportunity to enjoy a few holiday drinks at events throughout the festive season and still arrive home safe and sound.
ORN operates as simple, guiltless designated driver system. There is no cost for its use, but donations are gladly accepted.
Charmaine Gosselin is the coordinator of the ORN St. Malo chapter, which covers a swath of the southeast between Dominion City and Grande Pointe, running north to south, as well as Vita and Lowe Farm, running east to west.
“We are able to fill all the rides that get called in,” Gosselin says. “If folks are thinking, ‘Awe, they’re too busy to pick me up,’ no, we’re not. We’ll make it work.”
Dispatch lines at ORN open at 9:00 p.m. on designated nights. Individuals or groups can contact ORN when they are ready to leave their event. ORN volunteers arrive in teams of three or four to drive the client and their vehicle home as well as the volunteer vehicle in which they arrive.
If the event pickup is anywhere outside of ORN St. Malo’s district, dispatchers collaborate with other ORN districts to help create a fluid transition for the client.
So, for instance, if an Île-des-Chênes resident needs a pickup from a downtown Winnipeg location, one phone call to ORN will result in pickup by Winnipeg-based ORN volunteers to a location in Sage Creek where St. Malo volunteers will be waiting to seamlessly complete the journey.
While ORN doesn’t take advance bookings for pickups, Gosselin says a phone call to the dispatch in advance of the event never hurts. On the contrary, it helps ORN to put them in a queue for later.
The client should then contact ORN dispatch again at the time the pickup is needed.
“Everybody has to connect with our dispatchers after our phone lines open at 9:00 p.m.,” says Gosselin. “Our dispatchers need that communication to be able to find out the make and model of the vehicle, the client’s cell phone number, etc.”
Gosselin says there are almost no circumstances in which their volunteers won’t accommodate a pickup.
For instance, if a client has a unique dropoff situation where they’d like to be picked up at one event and taken to another event, then later delivered home, ORN will do that.
“You could be at your party and realize [you need more alcohol],” says Gosselin. “You want to go to the vendor and get another six pack. We can do that, too. We’ll pick you up at your party, bring you to the vendor, and drive you back to the party again.”
ORN drivers will even bring the babysitter home on the condition that the client stays with the volunteers until the babysitter is safely delivered.
Groups as well as individuals can be accommodated. ORN volunteers will be dispatched based on the number of vehicles the group arrived in at their party.
As if providing safe transport isn’t a big enough gift during the holidays, ORN St. Malo has special gifts in store for each passenger who uses their services this season. This is thanks to generous donors and supporters such as One Insurance.
To provide this amazing program, though, means ORN St. Malo needs upwards of 200 volunteers. So far, Gosselin says they’ve had no trouble finding enough people for the first few weeks of December. It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve that is still lacking.
“On New Year’s Eve, we would ideally need eight teams,” says Gosselin. “Right now, we only have one team.”
Volunteers must be ready to show up for their shift at the St. Malo headquarters at 7:45. They’ll be equipped with an hour of training, a two-way radio, and a packed lunch to sustain them.
In teams of three or four, volunteer drivers will then head off to wait for dispatch instructions from the comfort of a warm space in one of several communities in the region.
“So instead of just sitting around at headquarters, we typically send a team to Lorette, Île-des-Chênes, St. Adolphe, Ste. Agathe, Niverville, Morris, and St. Pierre if we need to.”
When dispatched to a call, volunteers drive together to the pickup location. En route back to the client’s home, two of the volunteers ride together in the client’s vehicle along with the client.
“We always want to have a [second volunteer] with the driver because people have been drinking and you want that extra witness for liability reasons.”
The third and possibly fourth volunteers follow behind in the vehicle that is owned by one of the volunteers. According to Gosselin, the owner is reimbursed for wear and tear on their vehicle as well as the gas.
Each shift, two more volunteers are also needed to run dispatch for the night.
“They are essentially the quarterbacks of the evening. They oversee headquarters, the snacks, the coffee, and the radio and communication to all of the teams all night long.”
Volunteer shifts run until 2:00 a.m.
“Don’t let the [late night] scare you,” Gosselin says. “The evening goes by really quick because it’s so much fun. You’re on an adrenaline rush and you don’t even realize how late it is.”
For the volunteers, there is much satisfaction in knowing that they may well be responsible saving lives during the holiday season.
Not to be dismissed, though, is the gratification they’ll receive when they get to choose a favourite non-profit organization to benefit from ORN’s charitable donations this year.
“We divide our funds according to the organizations our volunteers choose,” Gosselin says. “Last year we gave back $6,000 to 13 different organizations.”
ODR is always glad to have organizations send out their own volunteers in order to benefit from the donations at the close of the season, too.
