Whistler, WE DID IT!
We WON a Land Rover Defender to support our community, thanks to your votes and support! 30 charitable organizations were chosen to compete in this year’s Defender Service Awards and were recognized for the positive impact they bring to their communities.
We want to share how we got here and where we’re going!
The Opportunity
Our team first came across this opportunity to try and win a Defender two summers ago. We knew our current Outreach vehicle was aging, and we were in the process of figuring out how to move forward.
Our little twenty-year-old Pontiac Vibe, generously donated by Lori and Rod Rodha, is an incredible gift that has supported our clients for the last five years, but longer trips to the city for medical appointments and to our rural, Northern communities, especially in the winter, were becoming harder in this smaller, older vehicle.
When our team found this opportunity to try and win a larger, more reliable vehicle that could further support our client transport, delivery, and cargo needs, we couldn’t pass it up! We discussed it as a team and decided to enter the contest.
The Submission Video
Our submission video needed to describe who we are, the work we do, and how we planned to use the Defender. We were going to enter the Community Services category. We asked around and found a community member willing to help. THANK YOU, Ryan Regehr, for your support in producing and filming this video. We know that your impactful storytelling helped us get our story in front of the judges!
Our amazing staff and volunteer actors made this vision come to life, bringing our work at WCSS to the screen and hopefully soon to a worldwide audience.
James Fougere of Whistler Bear Tours generously lent us one of his Defenders to film with, helping us showcase the incredible comfort, capabilities, storage, and towing capacity of these vehicles.
Our hope was that we could win a new vehicle to support our clients through our Outreach services. We submitted the video, and we waited…
Watch our submission video here.
The First Try
In the summer of 2025, we submitted our video and waited patiently. Unfortunately, we were not chosen that year. We knew we had one more shot to enter, so we waited patiently again until the summer of 2026. We resubmitted our video and crossed our fingers!
FINALIST!
In July 2026, we got the amazing news: we were selected as one of 5 finalists in the Community Services category!
30 other organizations were competing to win a Defender in each category, along with the second- to fifth-place finalists from each category in the previous year, in the Honouree Award category.
The categories span important and impactful work in the following areas of service:
- Animal, Wildlife & Marine Mammal Welfare Award – Presented by Disney
- Community Services Award – Presented by ei3 (that’s our category!)
- Search, Rescue & Emergency Support Services Award – Presented by PELICAN
- Veteran & Civil Servant Outreach Award – Presented by WPP
- Outdoor Accessibility & Education Award – Presented by OUTSIDE Interactive, Inc.
- Defender Service Honourees Award – Presented by S&P Global Mobility
The Voting Begins
We heard from Land Rover Defender that our voting campaign would begin in mid-August and last only two weeks! Community members could vote daily in each category, and at the end of the campaign, Land Rover would tally and scrub all the votes. By mid-September, we would know which organizations had WON a custom Defender 130 and $30,000 USD!
Our team snapped into action, creating a two-week campaign to raise the most votes and hopefully win a new Defender for our social services team.
The campaign included print and digital advertising, logging over 140,000 digital impressions in two weeks. Our team put up posters, shared social media posts, and our community RALLIED! We had so much engagement for this contest. Our community really stepped up to try and help us win this vehicle. They know the challenges of our local highways in the winter, they believe in the work that we do, and they wanted to help.
Campaign challenges included keeping up the momentum for voting, keeping content fresh and engaging, encouraging daily votes, and emphasizing the need for this new car.
Destination Defender
In mid-September, we learned that, thanks to our amazing community, WCSS was a top 2 finalist in our category! Two members of our team, our Marketing Manager, Cara Burrow, and our Grants, Partnerships, and Fund Development Lead, Imogen Osborne, were invited to Destination Defender in Temecula, California, where 6 finalists would be presented with the keys to a custom Defender 130 and a cheque for $30,000 USD.
By 8 pm on September 12, we would find out LIVE who was going home with a NEW CAR, and our community would be watching back at home!
Our team members spent a great weekend networking with other top 2 finalists and award category sponsors, driving Defender 130s through the off-roading course, and checking out the full Destination Defender experience! They met and heard from the Rebelle Rally team, OverlandHer, about their annual rally experiences, and travelled to and from the event with Michael Michalchuk of Pemberton Search and Rescue, a top 2 finalist in the Honouree Award category.
By evening, it was time to dust off, get ready, and see who would win a new car…
The BIG WIN!
Around 6pm on September 12, our team members in California waited in tense anticipation to see who would be called to the stage, and our community gathered at the Westin in Whistler to watch the livestream!
Regardless of what happened, we would all be together to see if WCSS and our friends at Pemberton Search and Rescue would come away with a new vehicle (or maybe TWO..!) for our communities.
Over 400 sponsors, media personnel, and Land Rover enthusiasts watched live at the event in Temecula while finalists waited in suspense. WCSS was the second category to be introduced, and as our name was called by our category sponsor, Spencer Cramer of ei3, and our on-site team members made their way to the stage, our community watching at home EXPLODED in cheers, thrilled that their voting efforts had been rewarded. We were taking home a Defender 130, we had WON a new CAR!
We were all overwhelmed with gratitude for this incredible result of our community’s hard work and support!
Watch our community react here.
THANK YOU
It is an absolute privilege to have won such an amazing vehicle to support our social services. Over 250,000 votes were cast on behalf of these 30 incredible organizations, and we feel lucky every day to have such a supportive community that believes in us and in the work that we do. This is for YOU!
We have so many people to thank for making this possible:
Thank you to our incredible community for voting, sharing our posts, and advocating for us. You rallied your friends and family from all across the world. This was possible because of you, THANK YOU!
Thank you to the Westin Resort & Spa, Whistler, for hosting the award livestream so our community could be part of this incredible moment!
Thank you to Ryan Regehr for making our submission video and representing our work so well!
Thank you to James Fougere of Whistler Bear Tours for letting us film your Defender for our submission video!
Thank you to our amazing staff and volunteer actors who brought our story to life, and thank you for the incredible work you do every day!
Thank you to our category sponsor, ei3, for awarding us $30,000 USD to continue this work!
Thank you to Chase and Land Rover for seeing us, believing in us, and creating this incredible opportunity for organizations like ours to go farther. THANK YOU!
Thank you to the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation for their longstanding support of our current vehicle fleet. We can’t do this without you!
And to Pemberton Search and Rescue, who put their lives on the line daily to serve our community members and recreators; your work is so important and necessary. We are so thankful to have been alongside you on this journey, and while we are disappointed you didn’t come first in your category, we are thrilled you received $15,000 USD from Artemis to continue the amazing work you do!
THANK YOU to everyone who made this possible. We are overjoyed to have brought this vehicle home for our community!
What comes next…
Our team is currently working with Land Rover to customize our new Defender 130. We want everyone who sees our new Outreach Services car out and about to know who we are and how we help, so we can serve our community better.
We will receive our new vehicle in the spring of 2027. We can’t wait to show you how we’re going to use it… Stay tuned, and watch out for us on the highway next year. You’ll see us coming!
