A great roast beef dinner, great games, great music and an enthusiastic group of guests, volunteers and community supporters all came together Saturday night to make for a memorable annual Stampede dinner, auction and dance.
Held at the Elks Hall tickets for the event were sold out well in advance.
While figures on funds raised won’t be available for a few days yet, Stampede president Tim Rolph is very pleased with the evening.
“From all indications it was an extremely successful evening,” Rolph says. “Tickets to the event sold out in record time this year. Retirement Concepts came on board as the presenting sponsor for the event, and they were fantastic to work with.
“Participation in the auction was awesome, especially the frenzy of the Loonie toss, always fun, thanks to Wilf Smith for keeping the action moving.
The auction included 12 live auction items, 68 silent auction items, seven prizes for the loonie toss, three big prizes for the toonie raffle, and dozens of door prizes from the Stampede memorabilia table.
One couple who didn’t want to be identified pulled a Stampede poster out of the door prize box at random and it happened to be the 1985 poster, which ironically was the poster for the year they were married, received completely at random on the eve of Valentine’s Day.
Rivalling the loonie toss this year was the Joker Poker game where a deck of cards was shuffled taped face down at random on the playing table so that no one knew which were the winning cards.
For $10 people wrote their names on the back of the cards. The grand prize was a return flight for two to Vancouver with Central Mountain Air. Those whose names were on the two black Aces won Stampede swag bags filled with Stampede merchandise.
All in all it was a fun night with people rounding up the evening dancing to the music of the lakecity’s popular band Clancy Wright and the Silverado Band.
“All the comments I have heard to date have been positive, thanks to everyone who helped out making the event possible,” says Rolph, who expresses his appreciation for the exceptional group of directors and volunteers he gets to work with as Stampede president.