Anyone who has tried to coordinate a cooked breakfast for a family knows how tricky and time-consuming that can be. Now imagine cooking that breakfast for 300 people, and it gives some idea what the Ashcroft and District Lions Club manages to pull off every year at the Mother’s Day Fly-In at Campbell Hill airport.
The group has been providing breakfast at the event for at least 10 years says Vivian Edwards, the club’s secretary-treasurer. Each breakfast consists of three pancakes, three sausages, and two eggs, and Edwards says that last year 11 volunteers worked a combined 62 hours on the day itself. That does not include the time spent shopping for groceries in advance of the event, or getting the trailer to the site.
On Mother’s Day Sunday the first volunteer arrives at the airport at 7 a.m. to hook up the water and get the coffee started and the stove lit. Between 7:30 and 8 the other volunteers arrive, to get the tables and chairs set up. The cooking starts between 7:45 and 8, with the volunteers as “guinea pigs,” laughs Edwards.
The breakfast proper starts at 8:30. “There’s a rush at the beginning, and then it starts to peter out,” says Edwards. “We usually start clean-up around 11 a.m.”
She notes that in addition to the volunteers, the group depends on others to help make the breakfast such a popular event. “We try to spend as much money as possible locally, and Safety Mart has treated us very well over the years. About 90 per cent of the items are purchased here in town. And Geri Anderson at Ashcroft Workwear buys the sausages and eggs every year and donates them to us.
“I think people like the breakfast,” says Edwards. “It’s become a tradition.” This year’s Mother’s Day Fly-In is on Sunday, May 8