‘12 Dares of Christmas’: N.S. man finds unique way to raise money for charity

One last round of dares as the annual 12 Dares of Christmas fundraiser wraps up after 10 years.

Every holiday season, a Nova Scotia man has completed a dozen dares in honour of his late cousin.

“We just finished up our 10th year of the 12 Dares of Christmas. Another successful year, lots of great donations, and lots of support from people sharing and liking videos, so, yeah, pretty happy with how this year went.,” said Eric Anstey of Lower Sackville.

As part of the challenge, Anstey has gone paddle boarding in First Lake in the winter, rode around Mic Mac Mall dressed as the Grinch and even gotten a tattoo. One year, he was even dared to dress up as CTV News Atlantic’s Katie Kelly.

The challenge began as a way for Anstey to honour his cousin Riley Sears, who passed away in 2015 from meningitis. In the past 10 years, Anstey has raised more than $70,000.

“The following year in 2016 my wife and I thought this was a great way to try and raise some money and do something helpful for people, for students looking to get into their post-secondary education, and in a way to honour Riley and do something in his name,” he said.

“I really hope he’d be proud. He’d find a lot of the antics pretty funny. He’d be happy that we carried on his legacy in a creative way that was beneficial for people.”

Anstey said despite his love for the 12 Dares of Christmas, he’s going to find a new way of raising money next year.

“We’ve talked about the potential of exploring other ways of raising money but as far as the format of the 12 Dares goes, the 10 years is going to be the last year we do it this way. It seems like a good number to finish on, a nice round number, and we’re pretty happy with the total we’ve gotten to over the 10 years,” he said.

He adds he wasn’t expecting the fundraiser to get as big as it did, but it was a welcome surprise.

“To be honest, when I started this, I thought it was going to be me and some of our close friends watching a few videos and having a laugh and we thought it would be really awesome if we could raise $1,000, from that perspective we’ve certainly exceeded our expectations.

“We couldn’t be more appreciative of the support we’ve received, and it’s certainly been our honour and our privilege to be able to do this in Riley’s name, I hope in some ways this helped carry of his memory and his legacy.”

Anstey says he wants to thank one person who’s helped him throughout the past decade.

“Specifically want to say a huge thank you to my wife, she’s the behind the camera personality and honestly the brains of this operation, and honestly I could not have done this without her.”

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