Orange T-shirts raise $2,500
Sydney Chisholm - Jun 07, 2021 - Get Involved

In under two hours, a Kamloops brewery raised $2,500 for the Indian Residential School Survivors Society.

The owners at Bright Eye Brewery were shocked when they sold out of their orange “every child matters” T-shirts the same day they launched.

“Kamloops never ceases to amaze us with the support. But I don’t think that we fully expected to completely sell out of 100 shirts in a couple hours and raise over $2,500 in one day doing so,” Bright Eye Brewery co-owner Tyler Windsor said.

In the wake of the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, the brewery had orange T-shirts made up, with 100% of the proceeds going to the IRSSS.

Windsor said the brewery has done several similar fundraisers in the past for various other organizations, but none had been quite as popular right off the bat.

Bright Eye owners felt passionate about the fundraiser because the issue was so close to home.

“In the wake of hearing such tragedy that’s happened right in our backyard in Kamloops, we thought it’d be good idea to try to give back to the community as much as we could,” Windsor told Castanet.

The general manager at Bright Eye Brewery, Rhianna Klugie, wanted to thank the community for all the support—as this is something she is especially passionate about, seeing so many have been effected by residential schools.

“It is something that’s very near and dear to my heart. Both my grandparents as well as my father, he actually attended the very last residential school in Edmonton. So this is something that is definitely very, very close to home for me. So I can’t thank the community enough for how much it means to us that you come out and support this. With absolutely no get back to yourself. So thank you very much,” Klugie said.

The brewery will be restocking the orange shirts this week, and customers can pre-order them online now.

Bright Eye will continue the this campaign for the rest of June, as well as they have started selling “every child matters” stickers, which can be purchased for a $5 donation, with 100% of the proceeds also going to the IRSSS.


All Get Involved Stories