Members of the Lions Club of Athabasca knew in their hearts that June 11 was its 50th anniversary.
The group decided to hold off on celebrations, citing events like the Fort McMurray fire and resulting fundraising efforts as a deterrent.
“We decided not to do it, because of the pressure of too many things happening at the same time,” said chapter president David Maguire. “We just felt that it didn’t necessarily call for a celebration, we were working on too much at the same time and so we decided to postpone it until the fall.”
He said when they do finally throw their half-century party, people can be assured that they will go all out.
“We’re going to have a big catered dinner and we will have representatives from the various Lions Clubs from the district,” he said, noting local political dignitaries and, hopefully, some of the older Lions like founding member Jake Burritt, would also be invited.
After five decades, it is hard to go anywhere in town without seeing a sign of the club’s work around the community.
“We’ve been around a long time; 50 years you get a chance to do a lot of good stuff,” Maguire said.
From the Lions Centennial Park at the Riverfront and the Zambonis at the previous rink and the current Multiplex, to the grand piano at the Nancy Appleby Theatre and the Agriplex on the hill, the Athabasca Lions have truly made their mark around the community through their fundraising campaigns.
“The club started in ’66 and I remember in the 1980s, when I started teaching at Landing Trail, the carnival would come to town,” Maguire said. “It would be brought to town by the Lions and I would take art classes up there and draw the carnival rides and so on.”
Through the years, the number of members in the club have risen and fallen, with as many as 90 people involved at its high point.
“It started with a good number of local businessmen and local farmers,” he said. “There used to be a Lioness Club here, and the Lions and we put them both together and said well, the women could be Lions, and that was in the 90s.”
To this day, you may even see a member sitting in Buy Low Foods selling tickets for a fundraiser, like Maguire was during the course of this interview.
So what has kept the Lions members active in Athabasca?
“Probably a desire to want to do something a little bit better for the community they live in,” Maguire said. “It’s so easy to say, ‘To hell with it, I’m going to watch TV tonight,’ or ‘I’m going to go and do something else.’ To have a commitment to making your world a little bit better, to me, is priceless.”
