Above photo: Lion Linda Matthews was presented with the Melvin Jones Fellowship at the club’s 40th anniversary dinner.
2024 is an auspicious year for the Lions Club of Tumbler Ridge. It was 40 years ago—in 1984—when the club first started in Tumbler Ridge.
There are no members of the club that were here when it started. The longest-serving member is Lion Frank Walsh, who joined in 1995. He was one of the speakers at the event.
“It is my honour and privilege to be invited to speak to you this evening, and to proudly boast about our club and some of the outstanding things it has accomplished in the forty years it has been in existence,” said Walsh.
“I really don’t know much about the first eleven years of its existence … so I’ll do my best to let everyone know what it has done since Lion Grace and I moved to Tumbler Ridge in 1995.
He says when he and Grace joined, the Lions were a small club with big dreams. “The club had pretty well unreachable goals,” says Walsh. “With people starting to get laid off at the big mine, there was not all that much to be happy about. When Lion Grace and I transferred from the Granisle Lions Club in 1996, this club had three active members besides us. We had to borrow two more members from the Granisle Lions Club to help us cook and serve the Grizfest Pancake Breakfast that year. We firmly believed that the club would have its Charter pulled and we would disappear due to lack of membership.”
A few years later, Frank was elected president. While the club was slowly gaining a few more members, it was still quite small. He says he asked the District Governor why the Tumbler Ridge’s club’s charter wasn’t pulled. “He answered, “not
on my watch, buddy’. When we celebrated our 25th anniversary, he came up to me and said, ‘now, aren’t you happy, Frankie?’”
Still, as the town itself struggled with the closures of the mine, the club kept slowly growing. “As the miners left, the houses were being sold to seniors, and some of them were looking for a way to integrate into the community,” says Walsh. “We talked to some of them, and asked if they would help us do the hot dogs and hamburgers for our first Emperor’s Challenge, and they said yes. We invited them to a barbeque at Lions Park. That evening, we doubled our membership.”
However, the club was still broke, so they started a simple fundraiser: the Christmas Food Hamper Raffle. “Since all the contents of the hamper were donated, we raised a little over a thousand dollars,” he says. “After that, Dr. Helm suggested we cook the hamburgers and hot dogs for the next Emperor’s Challenge and from there on, it became an annual thing … to this day. It was a match made in heaven.”
When Quintette and Bullmoose mines closed for good, times became lean for a while, but the Lions survived. “Then new exploration led to the opening of Western Canada Coal, and with it, more hamburgers and hot dogs were consumed,” he says. “Our Lions Club was once again a busy little group. Our finances were also slowly building; and we were able to be of more help to our community. One example was the raising our annual bursary for graduating students from $300 to $500.”
Around this time, a group of seniors approached the club with the idea that they start a weekly bingo. After “a few tons of paperwork” were cleared with the government, bingo was a go, and the club found another source of revenue, with which they were able to help out the community to a greater degree. “We were helping not only with medical assistance; but our with the much-needed Food Bank, as well as with the Tumbler Ridge Museum, which was struggling to get off the ground. Our Annual Bursaries to TR Graduates had also increased to three, at $1,000 each.”
The club has continued to build strength upon strength. “During the last few years, our club has been able to purchase two electric scooters and two electric wheelchairs, along with over $5,000 worth of equipment for the Tumbler Ridge Clinic. It has also recently donated $10,000 to assist in renovating Bulterys house in Dawson Creek. We can proudly say that our club has come from dead broke—with only three members—to a proud and thriving club, with 36 members and a shining future.”
And it was this future that current club president, Lion Bob Rimes, spoke to. “Where do we go from here,” asked Rimes, rhetorically.
He says the club is fortunate to have a strong healthy foundation built with sweat equity and countless hours of dedication to a singular mindset of serving the community. “I reflected on what made this particular Lions Club successful against all the odds, and I kept coming back to the dedicated and selfless volunteers who understand our community and its needs.”
So the only way to go, he says, is forward, embracing the changes yet to come. “We need to embrace the excitement in the planning and ultimately completing a well done task,” he says. “As we move forward we must wholeheartedly agree that an insular, negative and ultimately detrimental desire to keep things as they are is not the way to achieve this. We need to initiate change within this group from the foundation up. We need to learn to cohesively work together harmoniously. In short the personalities will always be here, learning to work effectively despite these personalities will require the ability to be tested and stretched greatly to fully understand that what you say and do reflects on our entire Lions Club.”
He says that all Lions are representatives of the club. “There is a code of conduct when you agree to become a Lions member, dust it off and use it in your daily interactions within our community.”
He says he’s new to the community, and so are many of the people in the town. “ The old days are gone and we have to want to willingly move forward, understanding that our membership is growing with members also new to our community. Learn to embrace the change within your group dynamic and the group will continue to grow and thrive.”
He says while the club needs to remember the past, it should not be dominated by it. “To live with a ‘that’s the way it is always done’ mentality is to allow discontent and martyr syndrome to take over. If the group foregoes positive forward thinking and returns to what is comfortable, then it is status quo and that, my friends, is easy but uninspiring.
“We can do more. It is our Lions Club. Each one of us plays a critical role to its success. Let’s show Tumbler Ridge what an invigorated, all-encompassing group can accomplish. We will continue to gently move this mountain of complacency out the door, the work has already begun, the examples set, and in a few year’s time we will be the change that people have been quietly wishing for, swelling with volunteers and future leaders in our community!”
Of course, he says, that doesn’t mean losing touch with the heart of what the club is about. “We need to continue to assess the needs in our community regarding monetary and material funding as there are many.”
And this, he says, leads into one of the club’s big goals for the future. “Unfortunately there is limited availability here for seniors or low-income housing in our community. The time is now for the club to look at a community seniors/low-income housing centred, as well as a Lions Club permanent home base.”
He says that the federal and provincial governments are looking for strong advocates to spearhead projects like this, and he says it’s long overdue in Tumbler Ridge. “The Lions Club is the right group at the right time to move this type of project—which has been talked about and politicized to no avail—forward. Daunting? You bet. Possible? Absolutely!”
He says in the near future, he hopes that the Lions will be in attendance at every event within the community, promoting, aiding and supporting in any way they can. “A ‘how can I help?’ movement of blue and yellow shirts making each event a ‘We Serve’ opportunity. More than that, we have surrounding communities that are struggling within their own Lions group. Let’s arrange an outreach of support to help them succeed using the toolbox we have filled with our hard learned experience. Remember what we give we will receive back tenfold.”
He says the club has many revenue streams: volunteer events, running the concession at the community centre, bingo, and the campground at Flatbed Creek. “The campground is self-sustaining and produces enough revenue to keep it running—with improvements—and still be in the black each season.
“We have the foundation, now let’s look together to the future. Hold onto your Lions hats cause we are about to move forward to Lions Club 2.0 and beyond!”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.