The 69th annual Alberni District Fall Fair went off without a hitch this past weekend, with attendance bolstered by the food donation admission during the first hour of the fair on Thursday, Sept. 4.
According to Ann Sidall, office administrator for the Fall Fair, 1,975 lbs of food were collected.
“We got 1,000 people through the gate within the first hour,” Sidall said, making the food donations a huge success for the Salvation Army.
Attendance was higher than usual on Thursday, with 6,508 people coming in. The rest of the weekends attendance was about on par with other years even with the record breaking heat on Saturday, Aug. 6.
Fortunately, there were plenty of vendors selling cold drinks to keep fair goers well hydrated, including Mary Folley, who came up from Victoria to work at the Lemonade heave booth. According to her, the high attendance on Thursday was the “shock of the weekend,” with the stand seeing more customers on Thursday than they did any other day.
The high attendance also contributed to the large amount of money raised by the Fall Fair Association. After expenses, all of the money raised by the association will go into next year’s fair.
This was Scott Green’s, Chairman of the Fall Fair Association, 35th fair.
“It’s been a good 35 years for me, Ive enjoyed it, met a lot of people,” he said, adding that he’ll be back next year. “It’s in the blood. I’ll be 90 years old and I’ll be up here.”
The Kinette booth was also a success,
“It was a good weekend,” said Barb Kalugin, president of the Port Alberni Kinette Club. “We had good people in here, it went really well.”
The Kinettes make their entire budget for the year at the Fall Fair. They get volunteers from the groups they support to come out and help out at the food booth and in return, the Kinettes donate to those groups. The rest of the money is divided up between everything else that the Kinettes do in the community.
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