Kirsten Elder, Brian Kirkness, who won the contest despite taking a bite out of a potato, Pam Dewan and Courtney Hopkins peel potatoes during the annual contest.
Barry Reinhardt of Tofield, Alta., encourages his horse team of Mr. Hook and Harley on Friday during the Heavy Horse Pull.
Joe Larocque and Derek Smith of Team Pie-eyed get messy during the Synergy Credit Union pie eating contest.

 

Kenneth Brown
of The Clarion

The 46th annual Kindersley Goose Festival had its challenges with a mass cancellation of outdoor events on Saturday. Still, it was a good weekend of events.

The festival took place on Sept. 20-23, but most activities and events on Saturday and Sunday were cancelled due to the roughly 10 centimetres of wet show that blanketed the ground on Saturday morning. The Goose Festival Parade on Sept. 22 was the first major cancellation.

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All outdoor events on Saturday were cancelled, but a handful of events still went ahead. The New Life Community Church set up its inflatable jumpers in the old Peavey Mart building at the south end of Main St. The NHL Klippers Alumni Game went ahead as planned, and it was declared a success by organizers.

The Prairie Crocus Quilt Guild held its quilt show, a biennial event held during the festival, at St. Paul’s United Church while the church cooked and served hamburgers. The Red Lions hockey club hosted a well attended Goose Festival dance featuring BC/DC, an AC/DC cover band from B.C.

On the opening day of the festival, the Kindersley & District Chamber of Commerce held its annual potato peeling contest, but there were no geese for the plucking contest. The lack of geese gave the spotlight to a pie eating contest.

Synergy Credit Union organized the pie eating contest and a total of 10 teams of three people participated in the event. Kindersley Special Olympics and West Central Abilities were on hand at the Downtown Kindersley Association stage selling baked goods and hot food to raise money for their organizations.

There was also a pumpkin contest on the Thursday night beside the stage. The chamber’s karaoke contest went down on Friday night, as did the Kindersley Kobras football game underneath the lights and the Iron Horse Kindersley Klippers game versus the Melfort Mustangs.

Denise Sarada, the chamber’s executive director, said it was an eventful first Goose Festival for her as an organizer of events. She said it was a disappointing weekend for groups that had outdoor events planned, but everyone made the most of it.

“I think (events) went rather well for what we had,” she said, recognizing that there is no accounting for weather and the freak fall snow storm had a major impact on the festival. “We kind of shifted things around and made it work.”

She noted that she and a representative of New Life Community Church went to the old Peavey Mart building before Saturday to see if the space was big enough for the inflatable jumpers. The space was suitable, so organizers made the decision to move the jumpers indoors due to the expected cold weather. All events on Sunday were cancelled, but the Kindersley Air Cadets moved their pancake breakfast from the airport to the Kindersley Senior Centre.

Sarada said the rest of the changes were made on the fly. The food trucks stuck around for the whole weekend despite the weather, and one of the food trucks has decided to stay in town to be here for Saturday in case the chamber still holds a parade.

There is a possibility of a parade on Sept. 29 and Sarada said she hopes to make a decision about the parade today, so people could check the chamber’s social media page on Facebook to find out if the parade is a go. The executive director said she had to make a few phone calls.

She noted that there was great attendance for several of the events that did proceed. The contests on Thursday night had a good crowd and a nice crowd showed up at the mall to see the karaoke contest, so it was a good weekend, she added.

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