There was a full house and a great evening of eating entertaining for the sixth annual Cariboo Cattlemen’s Association Beef Bonanza Charity Dinner.
More than 80 guests paid $45 per person to enjoy the prime rib beef dinner, held at Oliver Street Bar and Grill, May 7.
The starter beef-course, a delicious teriyaki-marinated kebob was donated by Margett’s Meats while the entree beef, the prime rib, was donated by Save-On-Foods. Numerous other local businesses helped to sponsor the evening with donations of door prizes.
Oliver’s contributed by providing the venue and keeping the additional meal-costs as low as possible.
The proceeds from the event are directed to a different charity or cause annually.
This this year the funds will be directed to an equine assisted learning program, Horse M-Powered, run by Jane Folka which in addition to providing training with horses to children who are well, provides specialized training with horses for children with autism, learning disabilities, and youth with substance abuse problems who are enrolled in a treatment program.
Among those in attendance were Cuyler Huffman and his wife Jenny from Riske Creek’s Deer Park Ranch/Cotton Ranch.
Cuyler was elected by the directors and membership in February to serve a term as president of the Cariboo Cattlemen’s Association, taking over the position from Duncan Barnett who stepped down to run as a candidate in the provincial election.
Cuyler is the youngest CCA president in quite some time. Jenny also serves the association, as the CCA-secretary. The young couple have three young children, so between family life, ranching and CCA meeting/business they have a full slate.
Cuyler, in his position as head of the association served as the MC for the evening.
Entertainers getting together because they genuinely love making music, then happily singing (playing) for their supper while supporting a worthy cause were musicians Hal Giles, Troy Forcier and Ken Emery.
Also, always happy to obligate and throw his hat into the mix for a charitable cause in his hometown, Frank Gleeson sat down at the microphone to recite some of his rapid-fire original cowboy poetry.
This is third time Frank has donated his evening to the Cariboo Cattlemen for their Beef Bonanza fund-raising dinner and his poetry, loaded with western Cariboo-content which is delivered with his own unique twist of humour and wry sense of timing, never fails to entertain.
The location of the microphone, and the fairly high level of noise in the Oliver Street Bar & Grill (the Vancouver Canucks were onscreen in what was to be their final 2013 playoff game) made it a bit difficult for all of the guests to hear Frank well as he recited a newly written poem entitled; No No Branding, No Republic for Me along with a couple of other classic Frank Gleeson poems.