Concert Promoter Republic Live Creates Ooch and Hearts For Kids With Cancer

By Karen Bliss

In late June, before The Rolling Stones played Burl’s Creek Event Grounds in Oro-Medonte, Ontario, Karen Bliss of Samaritanmag.com spoke with the venue owner/Republic Live co-founder Stan Dunford about their events and the charities they support.  The big Stones show now out of the way, Republic Live still has its inaugural Big Sky Festival July 20 and the long-running Boots & Hearts Music Festival August 8-11.   

Dunford always adds a charity component to its annual Boots and Hearts country music festival, headlined this year (Aug 8-11) by Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert, and Maren Morris.

Years back, he teamed with music education charity MusiCounts and asked members of the music industry to donate $50 in exchange for tickets to the three-day festival but then he heard about Camp Ooch, a unique overnight summer camp for children with cancer and brought in the hashtag #BootsLovesOoch and enabled the festival-goers to help raise money.

“It's a cancer resort in the Muskokas, where kids that aren’t allowed or can’t do certain things because they’re fighting cancer, they come up to Camp Ooch, where they have complete medical facilities there for blood transfusions, radiation, chemo and everything,” Dunford tells Samaritanmag. “The kids get to actually live a normal life for a while, while they're being treated for their cancer.”

Stan, wife Eva, daughter Brooke, and “the whole team” at Republic Live are involved, he says.

Past initiatives for Camp Ooch at Boots and Hearts included a 50-50 raffle and donating $1 from every bottle of water sold. The country music festival is the largest of its kind in Canada and regularly draws 40,000 people over three days.

The really special part comes later — Ooch & Hearts. – Continue reading the feature on the Samaritanmag website.