A former Pembina Valley Hawk now playing junior hockey with the Everett Silvertips in Washington has launched a unique campaign to raise funds for mental health.
Raiden LeGall, a Morden native who goaltended for the U18 Hawks from 2021-2023, has teamed up with his goaltending coach, Starbuck-based Tim Morison, on the “Another Brick in LeWall for Mental Health Awareness” merchandise campaign featuring a custom Lego mini-figure version of LeGall in his Silvertips uniform.
Raiden LeGall with Morison and his son Mavryk and the Grinch version of the logo that started it all
They’re selling T-shirts, hoodies, and stickers with the design, with proceeds being split between Camp Erin in Washington, which provides grief support for youth who have experienced the loss of a loved one, and Eden Health Care Services right here in Manitoba for its mental health programming.
In just a few weeks, they’ve already raised over $11,000, with sales coming in from across both Washington and Manitoba as word spreads about the campaign.
“Neither of us expected it to go this big,” LeGall said. “It’s been pretty cool to see.”
Mental health is something that affects the wellbeing of everybody—and you never really know what someone might be going through at any given time, LeGall observed.
“Talking about what’s going on and not hiding it is so important,” he said. “Keeping it to yourself will only ever make it worse.
“If we can help just one person by talking about this, that’s all we set out to do.”
The topic of mental health is personal as well for Morison, who shared a bit of the back story behind this initiative.
“My wife and I, we went through a stillborn in 2022. For me, I’d never gone through any sort of depression or anything like it before, and then obviously when it comes to Christmastime, you feel it the most, you’re just kind of dwelling on things.”
Last year, Morison designed a logo featuring a Lego version of The Grinch as a hockey player—a play on the fact fans were playfully calling LeGall “LeGrinch.”
“It was a teddy bear toss game where when the home team scores, everybody throws teddy bears on the ice and they donate them to different causes,” Morison explained. “Raiden had a shutout game, so they couldn’t throw the bears until the end of the game … then on social media they started calling him Le Grinch.”
Morison took the idea and ran with it, selling LeGrinch merchandise to raise funds for mental health. The whole thing came together rather quickly but still managed to sell a dozen or so shirts and raise a modest amount for the cause.
“It was very spur of the moment,” Morison said. “But I’d always wanted to do something, just because I went through so much, battled through it, and now I feel like I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. And I’ve helped Raiden with his own mental health when it comes to playing hockey, so we have this bond together.”
The duo started thinking how they might go even bigger with it this year, and the “Another Brick in LeWall” campaign was born, playing off LeGall’s nickname as a goalie and featuring partnerships with the Silvertips Booster Club and the Lego store Bricks and Minifigs South Everett, who got the green light from Lego on the new logo design.
The success of the project has floored them both.
“I thought we’re just going to sell a couple T-shirts,” Morison said. “We’re a couple hundred dollars short of $12,000 right now. It’s amazing.
“It was just two guys sitting on a golf course going, ‘How do we make a difference?’” he added. “It honestly blew up more than we ever thought it would.”
While they’re thrilled to be raising so much money for two very worthy causes, Morison echoes LeGall in stressing they also hope this will get people thinking about mental health and how it’s okay to seek help with whatever you might be going through.
“My goal is just for people to talk,” he said, noting the wall design is representative of how every single person—every brick—holds up the others. “It’s about building a foundation, a strong foundation … one brick at a time, one person at a time, you can make a difference and make something stronger.”
Eden Foundation marketing and events manager Tyson Deceuninck said they’re thrilled that LeGall and Morison wanted to support the work of Eden in this way.
“It was an incredible surprise. This is a guy who’s born and raised in Morden, he’s playing out of Washington now, and he’s thinking of how he can help his hometown,” he said. “We can’t be more thankful that he’s thinking of people back home who also need support. We’re so happy with what they’re doing with this.”
Eden’s half of the funds raised will go to support their subsidized counselling program, Recovery of Hope, which ensures help is accessible to everyone that needs it. Some of the funds will also go towards the agency’s housing and employment support programs and to meet patient needs at the Winkler psychiatric hospital not covered by government funding.
You can purchase your Another Brick in LeWall gear online at my.cheddarup.com.
