Funeral arrangements have been made for well-known community activist Mark Boscariol.
Visitations are planned for Monday, July 30, from 7pm to 9pm at the south Windsor location of Families First at 3260 Dougall Ave. and Tuesday from 3pm to 5pm, a third visitation is set for later that evening from 7pm to 9pm.
The formal service is planned for Wednesday, August 1, beginning at 11am at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church. Boscariol died suddenly Thursday at the age of 51, leaving behind his wife of 14 years Daena and son Andreas.
An obituary posted by the Families First funeral home asks donations be made to the Downtown Windsor Community Collaborative's The Little Things Charity.
The charity also benefited from the Karaoke Rock star Challenge at Good Neighbour Friday evening, one of Boscariol's establishments in Walkerville.
Justice Fournier, a friend of Boscariol's and part owner of The Hub, helped Boscariol's community work live on through the event they conceived together. Fournier tells CTV News despite Boscariol's untimely death; he didn't think twice about whether to move forward with the party.
"Everyone asked me a thousand times if I would cancel and I told them the response that Mark would have said, 'the show must go on,'" he says. "Mark Boscariol was a show must go on kind of guy. I worked with him maybe 20 night markets and he would work 72 hours if he had to ... to make sure everybody was successful and happy around him."
Fournier says Boscariol was his mentor, helping launch his business, so the theme of the night makes a fitting tribute.
"Mark was always about taking people who nobody would see, funding them, backing them, supporting them, talking to them, doing whatever he could to make that person meet their potential," says Fournier. "To him, this event's going to be — hopefully the next neighbourhood rock star comes right from his parking lot."
Another audition event is planned for August before finishing off the series at a September night market.
— with files from CTV Windsor's Ricardo Veneza.