After selling 7,880 Blizzards last year, Moosomin Dairy Queen beat their goal of selling 10,000 Blizzards this Miracle Treat Day, selling a total of 11,196.
They raised $52,635 for the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon.
Over the past five years, Moosomin Dairy Queen has raised over $178,000 for the children’s hospital. Moosomin Dairy Queen is the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital top fundraising DQ location.
Joanne and Morgan Kerr of Moosomin DQ are proud of the thousands of Blizzards they sold this year on Thursday, August 13.
“We sold 11,196 Blizzards in one day! We sold over 3,000 more Blizzards than last year. We’ll be contributing $52,635.52 to the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital,” said Joanne.
Thankful for staff and support
Morgan says they are grateful for the people who supported Miracle Treat Day and their staff at DQ that made it happen. “It was a huge goal to sell 10,000 Blizzards, and I don’t think I truly understood what it was going to take to make that goal, but it took months of planning. It took hundreds of conversations. It took businesses and individuals stepping up and buying Blizzards. It took communities and schools getting involved, and it took an incredible team of staff who are so amazing. It’s a huge amount of people and corporations that were involved in it. We are so thankful.”
“We have an incredible team of staff that was willing to work hard for a good cause. I feel proud that we made our goal, but I’m even prouder of the people that helped us get there. We are very fortunate at the Dairy Queen to have such incredible employees. Our staff are absolutely incredible, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them. I had two staff with me at the Co-op on Wednesday night before Miracle Treat Day. We were there for six hours in the freezer, and then one of them turned up the next day at five in the morning to start work. Then asked me at 1 pm if it was okay to leave. Just amazing staff that work hard.”
Joanne adds, “It would never have been achieved if it hadn’t been for the fantastic team we have, led by Morgan, and of course the support of the community, the surrounding area, the local people, the local businesses.”
Blizzards being delivered all over area
Moosomin Dairy Queen sells sponsorships to businesses for schools all over the area. This fall Moosomin DQ will deliver Blizzards to 14 schools all over Southeast Saskatchewan.
“It was absolute chaos, but it was organized chaos,” explained Morgan. “With all of the Blizzards that were delivered, we only had one mistake. Out of 11,000 Blizzards that were purchased, over half of them were bought and donated for someone else. We have people in town, businesses buying Blizzards for other businesses. I had individuals coming in and saying, ‘I want to buy the Bryant House, the Kin Ability Centre Blizzards. The daycares, the schools, the hospital, the long-term care.’ We had over 60 coolers full of Blizzards.
“In the fall we will be delivering Blizzards to schools in Montmartre, Kipling, Redvers, Wawota, Maryfield, Moosomin has two schools, and then Rocanville, Esterhazy has two as well, and then Churchbridge, Langenburg, Grayson, and Elkhorn. So 14 schools in the area. Moosomin schools have already picked the day—they’re going to get their Blizzards on Terry Fox Day when they do their Terry Fox Run.
“It’s incredibly humbling knowing that you have an entire community and not just one community, but many communities behind you helping you raise money for an important cause.”
Toured Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital
DQ Owners, Joanne, Morgan, and Heather Kerr toured the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital along with Kevin Weedmark last August.
“I think one of the biggest things that made a difference this year was the support we received last year in the media, touring the hospital, and the Miracle Maker Award,” said Joanne.
“It brought into focus for people exactly what the Jim Pattison Hospital does and what it provides to the province,” said Joanne.
“We were offered the opportunity, thanks to Kevin Weedmark, to tour the hospital. The dollars are going to a good cause, but you don’t really know where it’s going. Now with having been there and seeing some of the extra things the money does, like of course, a hospital has a tool that takes a cast off a child’s arm, but with the extra donation dollars, they were able to buy a little cast cutter that makes it very quiet and not so frightening for a child, or injection pumps instead of a nurse having to get the injection ready and administer it. The donation dollars were able to buy injection pumps that do it automatically, freeing up the nursing staff to perhaps even nothing more than cuddle a sick kid. It made it so much easier to relate to people, and it gave them a real sense of where their dollars were going.”
Planning for Miracle Treat Day
Morgan says the owners have a system and begin contacting organizations in the area as early as April.
“We have a system. We started too late, as always. I start messaging large companies in April. I know that they need to get their funding in place, so we do that early. The real groundwork is in July. We start going to communities, talking to people, making phone calls. We spend the last week in Moosomin, focusing on Moosomin, and the week prior we spend out of town trying to focus on the surrounding area.”
Morgan says the touch-a-truck event held at the restaurant on Thursday evening was very well attended by families in the community.
“That was a cool event. I had never thought about it, but Rob Hanson gave me a hard time last year about not having the fire chief help out with Blizzards, and he was teasing, but I said, ‘I’ll get you next year,’ and I texted him, and he was all for it. Then it snowballed from there. We had the fire truck, the ambulance was there for a brief moment, the police were there. We contacted the Town of Moosomin and they brought their construction trucks, and then Pattison Ag brought a tractor. It was so fun. I think we’d have to do it again next year.”
She says many local people have had to use the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital.
“We keep seeing the impact that it makes, and we keep learning about more people’s stories. We have good friends that use the Jim Pattison every week. So it’s pretty easy to sell a Blizzard for a sick kid.”
Joanne adds, “The help that we can give people from selling Blizzards is all worth it.”
Night before and day of
Morgan explains the planning Moosomin DQ does the night before Miracle Treat Day to get Blizzards all over the area.
“This year we decided to put all the orders into coolers the night before because it took us six hours to do that and then we had it in groups—we colour coded each town by a different color with hockey tape. When we took them to the Co-op, we had 153 milk crates over there that were full of Bllizzards for out of town. Our first delivery went out at 8:45am to Virden, and then everybody else came between 9am and 10am. Esterhazy didn’t get done until about 1:30pm. The lady came at 9 in the morning, but it took her until 1:30 to deliver them all, and the Blizzards were still perfect.”
By Ashley Bochek, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Aug 20, 2026 at 08:02
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