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Caledon’s C3 celebrates 30 Years with upcoming anniversary celebration

July 17, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Riley Murphy

C3 is celebrating their 30th anniversary on Saturday afternoon, July 19, at the C3 James Dick Quarry in Caledon Village.

C3 is a non-profit club that connects people of all ages with a healthy, multisport lifestyle and achievable athletic goals.

They aim to promote a healthy lifestyle, enabling children and adults to grow in fitness together.

Head Coach Barrie Shepley shared that he was tired of seeing Canadian athletes being knocked out of sports because they or their families couldn’t afford equipment, lessons, or airline tickets to competitions.

In 1995, ten individuals each contributed $1,000 to establish the non-profit organization.

Now, C3 has had a dozen world champions from the group, both older and younger.

Olympian Simon Whitfield and Andrew Yorke will join the celebration to honour its 30th anniversary. 

Shepley shared he met Whitfield when the athlete was only 12 years old at C3.

As Whitfield grew up, Shepley was able to watch him go on to win a gold medal in the Sydney Olympics.

This was one of the events that got the ball rolling for C3, as more and more people began to join, including 2016 Olympian Andrew Yorke.

Shepley stated that one of the significant events that contributed as well to C3’s growth was their relocation to James Dick Quarry in Caledon Village.

From there, they were able to build infrastructure, such as volleyball courts.

He said although the club shifted from mainly focusing on high-performance with young elite athletes to a focus on active families, it doesn’t mean they’ve gotten away from high performance; rather, their membership has grown.

“For me, hitting 30 years means a lot of people have continued to believe in our vision and our dream,” said Shepley.

Shepley shared a significant part of what they’re trying to do is continually assess the needs of the community and their athletes.

“Our objective is really to inspire people to do something that will excite them and get them out of bed,” he said. “We didn’t have paddleboarding four years ago and now we have a big paddleboard program that includes four races where people from all across Ontario come to the quarry for paddleboard races in the summertime.”

Saturday is set to be a jam-packed day with a waterpark, paddling, a beach volleyball tournament, and more.

There will also be the opportunity to meet some of the Olympians, and some of the very first members who helped throw that $1,000 into a pot 30 years ago.

Shepley shared that a lot of the work they’ve done has been made possible by their Caledon-based sponsors.

“These are Caledon based companies that believe in what we’re doing, have every single year made a donation. In many cases they come out and volunteer on top of donations, and that’s just so crazy lucky,” he said.

“To see volunteerism, to see financial donations, to see equipment donations, people’s time, it’s amazing.”

He remarked that everybody will be returning to C3 this weekend to celebrate 30 amazing years, from Olympians to Babies.

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