Dear Editor
Re: 11th Annual Okotoks Food Bank Christmas Concert
A tremendous round of applause for an outstanding effort.
Two sold-out concerts with over 450 people attending each evening. We have received so many nice compliments on the two shows. We especially want to acknowledge and thank Okotoks Ford Lincoln for its very generous support as our platinum sponsor. And, to the Evangelical Free Church… what an absolutely marvelous facility. Thank you for everything you have done to make this such a terrific event. We also had 14 and four silver sponsors. Many of our sponsors were thrilled to be part of it and several have already said to count them in again next year.
At this writing, we still have some coins to count and a few small bills to pay, but it appears as though we will be at approximately $35,000 this year. That is a 60 per cent increase over last year’s effort, which brought in $22,000. We also collected several truck loads of food bank items. Executive director of the food bank, Sheila Hughes said something like 1,800 pounds from the two concerts was received.
Much appreciation to the Western Wheel, Eagle FM, Sun Country FM and 1140 AM for their help in spreading the word.
Tom Coxworth and Doris Daley did a marvelous job of moving the concert along, keeping us in line and entertaining the crowd between performances. We are fortunate to have professionals leading the evenings.
Much gratitude to all the volunteers, The Dewdney Players, the E-Free Church and others. This project has a lot of moving parts, and it came off flawlessly. Special mention to John and Margaret Pearson who spent days distributing over 100 posters throughout the entire community and much more at the concerts themselves.
And a huge thank you to the incredible line-up of performers and musicians. We had 12 each evening, all from the Foothills area. There were four ACMA nominees for 2017 and topped off by our special guest performer, a multi-Juno Award winner and Platinum selling country artist.
Thank you to all who attended. We really appreciate the support and hope you enjoyed yourselves.
John Fraser, Ed Sands, Kim Clark, Nives Lever and Dwight Forseth
