CALEB NICKERSON
DANFORD LAKE
Jan. 26, 2019
On Saturday afternoon, dozens of residents from the Danford Lake area gathered at Bethany Hall for an annual community tradition: the Winter Carnival.
Put on by the Recreation Association and hosted at their local church hall, the day kicked off with breakfast at the hall, followed by a magician, wagon rides and an evening of live music.
Alleyn et Cawood Mayor Carl Mayer said that he and RA President Roger Johnson have been running the event for the past 20 years. He deferred to long-time RA secretary Irma Peck when asked how the event came to start.
“We built the rink in ‘68 and that was our first carnival,” she explained. “The ice on the creek would be frozen and we’d have a race on there for king and queen. There used to be hockey and broomball and everything.”
Mayer added that the proceeds from canteen sales go to the Bethany Hall committee and he expected Ottawa band 3rd Wave to pack the venue that evening.
“Our big thing is the mud run, this is just more or less to help them out for the winter, pay for the heat,” he said.
In the canteen, RA volunteer Isabelle Cardinal said that the chilly temperatures caused some complications.
“We were supposed to have sled dogs but unfortunately the weather was too cold so we have the horses,” she said.
She said that in such a small community, several of the volunteers from the RA also serve on the hall committee.
“There’s a lot of overlap,” she said. “We all pitch in together.”
