User:Harris Gulko/sandbox

One day the KEREN KAYEMETH - the Jewish National Fund of Israel - invited Bernard Bloomfield, the president at the time of Jewish National Fund of Canada, and Harris D Gulko, CEO of JNF of Canada to a big empty field between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They told them they wanted to establish a presence in that area - very close to the Green Line. They asked them what Canada could do. Gulko suggested that it would be an ideal location for a new forest that could be called CANADA PARK. Most of the earlier Canadian JNF projects in Israel were either up North or down South - two or more hours drive from either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Gulko suggested that JNF of Canada should seek 10 donors each to donate $100,000 and be named “Founders of Canada Park”. And 18 people each to be named “Builders of Canada Park” in return for a donation of $50,000. Also to seek 100 contributors of $25,000 each and enrol them with another appropriate honorific. Bloomfield responded by asking where did Gulko think JNF could find ten people each prepared to donate $100,000. Gulko replied that he thought he - Bloomfield - would be one of them. Bloomfield thought a minute and then replied that he might very well agree to be such a donor. Then he asked who else should be approached? Gulko replied that he thought that his brother Louis would also agree. Bloomfield replied that he was sure that if he asked him he would also agree. But then he asked where would we go from there? Gulko replied, if in the first few minutes of our new project we obtained two of the top donors, surely with time and effort we could get eight more, and go on from there. Thus on a wind-spent hill between Israel’s two major cities was born Canada Park. The main road in the Park is named for Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who officially and ceremonially opened it in 1975.