Once again this year the Welding and Fabrication Techniques program built beds and participated in the Annual Kiwanis Bed Race held February 7th, 2015 at Ottawa’s Winterlude festival. Along with the Welding student’s entry, four other Algonquin based teams participated in the race. Watch this video clip to see our students, staff and faculty in action or click on this link to read the announcement from the Kiwanis club outlining the race and its history.
Six new beds will be constructed tomorrow in Algonquin College’s Welding Lab for participants in this year’s Accora Village Bed Race presented by Allstream for the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa. The Bed Race – which is the world’s largest Bed Race – is an annual part of Winterlude in support of Kiwanis Read-a-thon and local Kiwanis Youth Programs. Last year’s Bed Race raised $65,000.
Algonquin College Welding and Fabrication students will be building the new beds in our Welding Lab (CA124) to replace hospital beds which were used by race organizers during previous races, but have since become unusable and hard to replace. The Kiwanis Club of Ottawa is supplying the materials for these new beds while the College is donating the consumables and use of the necessary machinery, and students are volunteering to assemble the beds with help from their Coordinator.
In return, the students will be allowed to use one of the newly made beds in the competition (though they had to promise their bed would not be any better than the other five!). In addition to this team, there are two other Algonquin College teams participating in the Bed Race including a School of Hospitality and Tourism Team, and a team of Paramedic students. Besides the regular competition, these teams will be competing head-to-head in an Algonquin College heat at the Bed Race. A total of 45 teams are expected to participate in this year’s Bed Race.
This year’s Bed Race is February 2. More information about the Bed Race can be found on the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa’s website.
See photos from this year’s race here!