How Len Thompson Lures came to the aid of its community during COVID-19

When the owners of Canadian-based Len Thompson Lures realised the depth of the COVID-19 pandemic back in April, they wanted to do their part to help the community.

“As with many businesses, we were very slow during the spring,” said company President Brad Pallister. “My sister, Jessica, and I wondered how we could keep people working, while also helping families struggling with the economic impacts of this unprecedented time,” he added. The siblings thought that their nationally distributed lures could generate interest across the country so they introduced six limited edition patterns in May, with half of the proceeds from the sales being donated to community food banks.

The lures helped raise a total of $24,122, which Jessica Thompson-Pallister rounded up to $24,350 for the 29 community food banks that were supported. “We could not have done this without our conservation and retail partners,” said Thompson-Pallister. “We had four Fish & Game associations make contributions on behalf of the campaign and 12 of our Len Thompson retailers stepped in to buy the lures for re-sale in store.”

Smaller to mid-sized communities with a rich history of fishing and conservation activities were the main recipients of the donation, mainly in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Pallister siblings (pictured above) also took the opportunity to make several deliveries in person in September and loaded 3,600lb of groceries into their family’s old holiday trailer and embarked on an eight-day, nine-community and ten-food bank road trip.

“Overall, we are very happy with how the campaign went and could not be more grateful for the support we had to make it all possible,” said Pallister. “We hope to do this again and make the campaign bigger and better next year.”