Community View Lions keeping busy in club’s 15th year

By ANNA SMITH Local Journalism Initiative on July 31, 2024.

The Medicine Hat Community View Lions Club is looking to bolster its 17-member group to keep up a busy schedule serving and connecting with the community, as the club has for the past 15 years.

Originally chartered in 2009, the club was originally known as the Crescent Heights Lions Club, but has since updated its name, says club treasurer Nancy Crowley.

“It’s wonderful because it’s very difficult to have a volunteer club make a go of it in this day and age; everybody’s so busy, so it’s difficult to get volunteers,” said Crowley.

Despite this, the club has remained active in the city and beyond, raising a total of $381,388 since 2010 for various organizations and causes as they’ve come up. Most notable of these include $70,000 to HALO, $50,000 to aid with the establishing of the Ronald McDonald House and $20,000 for the Medicine Hat College Endowment.

“The reason we can do this is support from the community, because the community is always very supportive,” said Crowley. “As soon as you say you’re with Lions, people say, ‘Oh I had a relative in Lions, Lions helped my dad, Lions did this.’ It is, after all, an international organization, and we do have the other club in town, the Medicine Hat Lions Club. They’re the ones with the food booth at Stampede.”

The club keeps up with multiple recurring fundraisers, from 14 bingo evenings a year to a casino night that takes place roughly every 18 months, said Crowley.

“There’s been various fundraising efforts over the years as the people change and such, but recently we’ve been doing our barbecues out at Golden Sheaf Park,” said Crowley. “For the last three years we’ve been going out in the summer approximately every other Saturday, and so we’ve been raising some money there as well.”

Crowley expressed gratitude for the support of campers at the park and the opportunity to provide good food to those who visit, both at the barbecues and recently at its Stampede pancake breakfast, thanks to sponsor A&W.

“I think we had about 450 people. We had planned for 500 because it was the first time. The A&Ws in Calgary do pancake breakfasts, they have for years, so the manager thought maybe we should do one here in town,” said Crowley. “It was a bit of a last minute decision but yeah, it was very exciting.”

It is the hope of the club to continue to support to the community, and to recruit more hands to be able to expand that service work in the near future.

There are three more barbecue events this summer, on Aug. 3, Aug. 17 and Sept. 1. Crowley encourages residents to make their way out to Golden Sheaf Park Campground for a hamburger, cheeseburger or hot dog, as well as chicken fingers, onion rings, poutine and water or soft drinks. The Lions will arrive at noon and be available for the lunch or early dinner crowd until 6 p.m.

Members are also planning to host a garage sale and barbecue at the Division Avenue Co-op on Sept. 7.