Burntwood Curling Club (1971) Inc.’s Monday fundraising pickerel fish frys return on the first Monday of the month for a second season beginning Monday, Nov. 2 to offset the cost of a new CIMCO Refrigeration RP-5W ice plant, replacing a 1968 vintage model after some 47 seasons of service. Ice plants for curling rinks typically need to be replaced every 20 years or so.
This will be the eighth such fish fry at the club since the popular dinner made its debut last October before finishing up last season with a special Friday timeslot last March 20 to coincide with the start of the 45th Vale bonspiel weekend.
But next month it’s back to the usual first Monday of the month timeslot.
The two most recent fish frys last winter attracted crowds of just over 150 people each for the $15-a-plate pickerel fare on the second floor of the curling club overlooking the sheet for dinner between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. At 150 or slightly more dinners, the club was operating at pretty much sell-our capacity for those last two fish frys.
Burntwood Curling Club past president Jonathan Sawatsky said last March that he got the idea for the fundraiser while curling at a bonspiel down south in Altona in the winter of 2014 where the host club served a fish fry lunch. He brought the idea back up north and presented it to the Burntwood Curling Club.
The club had to commit last fall to buy 350 pounds of fresh pickerel from the commercial fish packing station in Wabowden to get their supply for last year, Sawatsky said at the time. Hence, they had 50 pounds of pickerel, also known as walleye, on sale for each dinner.
Pickerel is the most valuable commercial fish catch in Manitoba, with an average value of about $20 million per year, which is about 70 per cent of the landed value of all species, and comprise more than 40 per cent of commercial fish production in the province by weight, according to the fisheries branch of Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship.
In addition to raising money through the monthly fish frys, the City of Thompson; Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries, a provincial Crown corporation through its small capital sponsorship program; Manitoba Housing and Community Development through its Community Places Program (CPP); and Vale, have all contributed money ranging from $12,500 to $40,000 to the ice plant replacement project as well. Vale last June matched what the curling club made through its fish frys.
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