Skip to content

Gallery plans Chew the Fat

The Station House Gallery is gearing up to celebrate the city’s 85th birthday year with a special fundraising event called Chew the Fat.

The Station House Gallery is gearing up to celebrate the city’s 85th birthday year with a special fundraising event called Chew the Fat.

This event will be the opening event for the gallery’s summer theme show My Williams Lake that opens on Saturday, July 5.

“We have big plans for this event,” says gallery manager Diane Toop.

“A day outside the Station House with events, beer garden, food, music, children’s activities and talk, lots of talk about the old days.”

She says they are inviting some longtime residents to share their stories with visitors during the event.

“We are really hoping to encourage people to come down and spend some time with people they might not have seen for a while or people that they just like to ‘chew the fat’ with and to remind people how important the Station House was and is, to our community,” Toop says.

The organizing committee is also looking for musicians who are willing to play for a small honorarium (Gallery Shop certificate) and more volunteers to help on the day of the event including two designated drivers for the beer-garden customers, food production and service, as well as set up of the outside activity areas.

Walkers will also be needed to monitor the site for safety purposes.

During the Chew the Fat event tickets will be sold on arts and craft items that are donated for the gallery fundraiser. A photographic quilt created by youth entries selected for the summer show will also be auctioned at Chew the Fat.

Funds are being raised to fix and repaint the outside of the gallery building, which is the original Pacific Great Eastern railway building.

Toop says the gallery is accepting donations for the fundraiser right up until the day of the event.

“We really want people to be aware that all the funds raised will be used to fix up the outside of the building,” Toop says.

Anyone who would like to assist with the Chew the Fat event is asked to call Diane Toop at 250-392-6113 or email her at manager@stationhousegallery.com.

The gallery society also needs volunteers to help with numerous other jobs throughout the year such as clean-up and painting work bees, organizing refreshments for opening nights, helping the exhibition co-ordinator with hanging shows, printing gallery items from newspapers and online sources and putting the information into binders for future reference, helping man the Christmas market, helping with inventory, and more.

Becoming a Station House Gallery member also has advantages in that members are automatically invited to the monthly, invitation only, gallery openings.