Son’s memory honoured in hospital donation

PENTICTON – Donna and Harold Schellenberg are honouring their son with a generous donation to the South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation.

The Schellenberg’s $30,000 donation honours their late son Vance, who was one of six people killed in a helicopter crash near the Stikine River on February 7, 1990.

Vance, who was 29 at the time, was accompanying a flight out of a mining camp in northern B.C. when the helicopter went down after encountering white out conditions.

“It was a terrible crash – and he had so much promise too,” Donna says in a media release from the Medical Foundation. “He had job offers from all over even the Middle East. It was a tragic loss.”

The Schellenbergs moved to Penticton in 1958, where Harold worked as a travelling salesman before changing careers to become a stockbroker from which he retired 27 years ago. Harold sat on the hospital board in the 1980s and has been involved in Kiwanis, minor hockey, scouts, curling and golf.

Donna is active in Penticton’s arts scene, having served on the South Okanagan Performing Arts Centre board as director for five years. She is a member of the Penticton Tuneagers and was recently elected to the board of the Shatford Centre.

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