Around Town

SLIDESHOW: NCCF’s ‘I [Heart] New Canaan’ Photo Contest Entries

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More than 30 residents, including several talented photographers, gathered in the gallery area at Bankwell on Elm Street on Thursday to mark the installment of the New Canaan Community Foundation’s “I [Heart] New Canaan” photo show. The first-ever show from the nonprofit organization asked locals to submit pictures that captured what was special to them about New Canaan, and scores of photographers came back with more than 120 entries, said NCCF Executive Director Cynthia Gorey. “We are so pleased to promote the ‘I [Heart] New Canaan’ idea,” Gorey told the crowd during a brief break in the wine-and-cheese event. “We love New Canaan the Community Foundation is an important part of this town. This was just an idea that came into our minds and we said we’d see if we get any photos, and were astounded by how many we got and how wonderful they were.”

The photos were judged by professional art appreciators from Carriage Barn Arts Center, Silvermine Arts Center and New Canaan High School.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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Quick update on the closely followed renovation and restoration of the famed former Huguette Clark estate on Dan’s Highway: The New Canaan Building Department issued a permit Jan. 12 for a 60-by-22-foot in-ground pool. The estimated $105,000 job will be completed by Signature Pools of Norwalk, according to the permit. ***

Two of New Canaan’s most prominent and effective nonprofit organizations—the New Canaan Land Trust (membership info here) and New Canaan Community Foundation (information on giving here)—held their annual meetings Thursday night. Some 200 supporters attended each event, held at the Country Club of New Canaan and Waveny House, respectively.

News

Anonymous Local Donor Funds ‘Kay Timmis Award’ for New Canaan High School Students

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Since news of the passing of Kay Timmis broke this week, scores of New Canaan Public Schools students who through four decades had come to know the cherished substitute teacher have shared remembrances and tributes to a singular educator and human being. Now, thanks to a local parent whose kids went through the schools here and whose family is feeling the loss deeply, generations of future students will be touched by Kay’s spirit and legacy. This spring, through a fund administered by the New Canaan Community Foundation, the first-ever “Kay Timmis Award” will be presented to a deserving student. “Mrs. Timmis will be remembered this spring and every spring after that,” said New Canaan Community Foundation Executive Director Cynthia Gorey, who on Wednesday morning took a call from the town woman behind the fund—a New Canaan resident who wants to remain anonymous. “It’s a parent whose kids went through the schools and her kids had Ms. Timmis as a substitute teacher and they just were really touched by this woman and were moved to do something to honor her legacy and help people to keep remembering her for the good that she did,” Gorey said.

Around Town

‘It’s All about Our Town’: New Canaan Community Foundation Helps Save Christmas

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For many New Canaanites, the high Christmas season launches with the Holiday Stroll and first Sunday of December, when firefighters deck the fire house, and runs through Christmas Eve caroling at God’s Acre and Dec. 25 church services and family dinners. Two important pieces of favorite local Christmas traditions emanate from Kiwanis Park, where the Exchange Club for some 40 years has sold wreaths and trees alongside Santa’s Workshop, where local kids meet the big man on weekends. So when it was discovered suddenly two weeks ago that the fuel oil tank which heats Santa’s Workshop (at the New Canaan Girl Scouts Merrie Bee Cabin) had deteriorated irreparably, raising the prospect of a Workshop-less holiday for scores of locals, it represented a problem not just for the Exchange Club and Girl Scouts, but the community at large. Enter the New Canaan Community Foundation, which immediately issued a $2,600 emergency or “out of cycle” grant to cover most of the cost of a replacement tank.

Around Town

Young Philanthropists: Lessons in Nonprofits, New Canaan and Humanity

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Town resident Nicholas Smith, 17, had spent much of his downtime as a King Low Heywood Thomas freshman hanging out at New Canaan Library, playing tennis at the New Canaan Racquet Club or relaxing with friends. That year, at his mother’s prompting (“My mom was always looking for ways to get me out of the house”), Smith applied to join the New Canaan Community Foundation’s Young Philanthropists. Though he’d volunteered as a server in soup kitchens with his family, and even spent two weeks working at a construction site in Appalachia, Smith said no prior experience had prepared him for his first meeting in the program, which gives participating teens a unique look into the nonprofit world by putting them fully in charge of grant allocations for area human services organizations. “I saw basically that it wasn’t grownups leading it—it was purely a teen-led thing, the teens were the actual leaders,” Smith said from a table at Starbucks overlooking Park and Elm Streets on a recent evening, describing what hooked him into a program that has become an important part of his life. “Grownups tell us where to meet and organize meetings, but we were making the actual decisions about who gets what.