Headline News

Oktoberfest dinner attracts large crowd to Limerick Community Centre

October 24, 2023

By Mike Riley

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Limerick Friends’ Club put on their Oktoberfest dinner on Oct. 21 at the Limerick Township Community Centre starting at 5:30 p.m. Admission cost $20 for adults, $10 for children aged six years to 12 years, and children under fiver years ate for free. Overall, they raised approximately $1,000 toward local charities and events. LFC members Jo Anne Carrol and Dawn Lockhart comment on this successful community dinner.
The LFC Oktoberfest community dinner at the Limerick Community Centre featured a wide variety of delicious food; sausage, cabbage rolls, meatballs, schnitzel, potatoes, vegetables, coleslaw and assorted desserts. There was also an assortment of hot and cold beverages to go with this hearty meal.
The LFC dinner pays homage to the Oktoberfest festival held each year in Munich for over 200 years. The festival originated back in 1810 with a party convened to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince (later King) Ludwig I of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. It has since become a huge annual celebration in Germany and is celebrated and influences celebrations in many other countries across the world.
Carrol said the dinner was going well and that a bunch of her grandchildren had come by to help with the dinner.
“We got a good turnout. We weren’t too sure because of the weather but we’re never sure. When we started, there were four of us here today and we were like oh no, and then my kids started showing up. They asked what I was doing and found out I needed help and the next thing I know they came by to help out,” she says.
Carrol says they’re always on the lookout for volunteers, especially young people, as there are lots of events that they can participate in that they can get their volunteer hours at. She mentions an event on Oct. 28 with the Limerick fire department that they have students lined up for, and that the LFC gets good hours for them to fulfill their volunteer hours needed for high school.
“And if they do a really good job, we tell them to come back. For the Coe Hill Fair for example, my grandson got 40 hours helping set up, cooking, serving and cleaning up afterwards,” she says.
Carrol says it took four days to get everything ready for the Oktoberfest dinner, including two days of shopping, a day of getting the cabbage rolls and the coleslaw made and a day of putting everything together for the festivities. She says the volunteers serve attendees the first time they fill their plates for expedited service, and then let everyone serve themselves if they want seconds.
Bob Clarke attended the dinner with his wife and says they come to these LFC events all the time.
“We’re hardworking people. They’re always supporting something so it’s good to support them,” he says.
Lockhart told Bancroft This Week that the Oktoberfest dinner had over 70 people come by the community centre. She said they’d be donating $100 to Wollaston and Tudor and Cashel for candy for their Halloween events and about $600 to the Tri-County Food Bank to help out with their Christmas hampers.
“We did very well and had a packed house,” she says. “We raised, I don’t know the exact figure, but we made about $1,000.”