Jeritt Raney ready to make his gutsy boxing debut for MacKids and Champions for Charity
By Jeff Hicks
KITCHENER —
A throaty horn blares through town every summer morning like a bellowing alarm clock.
The Chi-Cheemaun, the Big Canoe, announces it is getting ready to ferry from the Tobermory tip of Bruce Peninsula across open waters to Manitoulin Island.
This is where Jeritt Raney — one of Mandy Bujold’s 20 Champions for Charity eager to enter the boxing ring at a sold-out Tapestry Hall on April 24 to raise money for MacKids — grew up.
His Tobermory-raised ears still ring with the beastly moan trumpeting the imminent departure of Georgian Bay’s one-boat flotilla, echoing off limestone cliffs and vibrating deep in his chest.
“That’s your wakeup call,” said Raney, who was born on St. Patrick’s Day but his defiant mom Jill refused to name him for a snake-charmer.
“Never get sick of hearing that.”
Seventeen years living in Kitchener hasn’t changed that.
It’s still a wakeup call that resonates in his Shamrock-shaken soul and rattles any lingering complacency with a stiff shillelagh of empathy.
That’s what the trained chef and co-owner of R&R Food Company — a culinary combination of sandwich shop, butcher shop and ready-to-go prepared meals — got as he toiled behind-the-boxing-scenes of Champions for Charity just a few years ago at Tapestry Hall.
“I just thought it was awesome,” Raney said of observing past Champions for Charity, a few of his chef colleagues, on the fight night hotplate of community service.
“I really wanted to start to try to be part of something, to do some good in life.”
So at Tapestry Hall in Cambridge, perilously close to age 50, Raney will enter the ring as this year’s edition of the Champs close in on $750,000 raised for McMaster’s incredible children’s hospital.
More than a million dollars was raised over the first three Champs charity fights.
This year, they’ll also help Waterloo Regional Health Network purchase an additional echocardiogram machine for its paediatric clinic through a 50/50 draw and online auction.
Raney, four-leaf clover tattoo on one shoulder for his aspiring marine biologist daughter Mady, wants to be part of this cause.
He’ll stroll into the ring, not to the Chi-Cheemaun’s distinctive dirge, but to The Hu’s growling anthem Wolf Totem.
He aims to offer up a boxing display as appetizing as the braised lamb shanks he loves to serve over creamy polenta.
His partner Kelly thinks he’s absolutely unhinged.
But, woollen flat-cap pulled down to his eyes, he has embraced months of double-jab training for his boxing debut.
Much like their son Sean has embraced a double-major — leadership & civic engagement and political science — at McMaster University.
The Chi-Cheemaun is about to leave dock. This is your wake-up call.
“I’m pretty gutsy and do things on a whim.”
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