Ribber Curtis Christianson prepares multiple racks of ribs and some chicken during Medicine Hat's first ever Ribefest. -- NEWS PHOTO MO CRANKER
Medicine Hat News
Medicine Hat’s first ever Ribfest brought ribbers from all over North America to the Hat for the weekend to display their product, and to raise some money for a local organization.
The event began Friday afternoon and ran until Sunday evening, showcasing some of the best ribs, chicken and pork North America has to offer, with a large portion of the event’s proceeds being donated to Medicine Hat’s Big Brothers Big Sisters chapter.
“We just want to show people how good barbecue can really be,” said festival director for Ribfest Canada Les Gagne. “This is a true showcase of all things meat, and all things barbecue. We know people can have a great barbecue at home, but here, they can come out with their family and friends and just have a good time — maybe they’ll even learn a thing or two about barbecue from one of the ribbers.”
Gagne says a big part of the each event is giving back to the community which lets them set up shop for a weekend.
“It’s definitely important to give back,” he said. “When we come into a city, we want to help out a bit. The local Big Brothers Big Sisters group reached out to us and helped us make this happen, so it’s important for us to work with a group in each city we stop in to give some of the proceeds back to them.”
Big Brothers Big Sisters representative Kate Leeming says it is great for the organization to get support from such a large event, and from the community.
“This is something we hope to do year after year,” she said. “It means a lot for us, because I feel Big Brothers, Big Sisters is a really great organization. There’s a lot of kids in the community we help. It really is humbling to see, and we’ve gotten a lot of good feed back so far.”
Gagne says Ribfest will be back next year, and hopefully for many years to come.
“We’ve been doing this for so long in Ontario and could not believe you guys didn’t have anything like it out here,” he said. “We’ll for sure be back next year, hopefully bigger and better, too.”
