Pure Country 91.7 hosts successful food drive

Bell Media’s Pure Country 91.7 has wrapped up its first annual Camping for Cans food drive on Friday.

Campbell Company of Canada came through in a huge way just as the event began winding down. The company known for its soups committed to delivering eight pallets of food to the Sudbury Food Bank this week in recognition of the radio station’s event. Seven pallets of Campell’s Chunky soup along will a pallet of Goldfish crackers are to be delivered directly to the food bank.

“So we’ve done the math,” said Pure Country 91.7 program director and on-air host Bryan Cooper during a live broadcast on Friday evening.

“That is 11,839 cans of soup that are going to the Sudbury Food Bank.”

“That is fantastic. That is a lot,” said Daniel Xilon, the food bank’s executive director, during the same broadcast.

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The goal of the campaign was to collect enough non-perishable food items to fill a four-man tent along with $5,000 in cash donations for the local food bank. The radio station during its 10-hour event actually more than doubled its monetary goal, raising more than $13,000.

“When factoring in a massive surprise donation from Campbells Soup, we collected 12 times more (food) than what we aimed for,” said Cooper, in an email to CTV News.

“This event had been in the works for quite some time, and the outcome was all the more proof of how important this was is to our community.”

The whole Pure Country 91.7 team was at the New Sudbury Centre from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday for the event.

"We wanted to do something that was not only a little bit different, but would still rally the community together," said morning radio show Josh Corbett.

This was Pure Country 91.7's first Camping for Cans event.

For more information on the Sudbury Food Bank and how to donate, visit their Facebook page.

CTV News and Pure Country 91.7 are both owned by Bell Media.