All business in Winchester

The wheels on the bus…
North Dundas’ goal of promoting the idea of shopping locally was brought to the Joel Steele Community Centre again for the third year in a row! The Local Business Expo gathered over 90 local vendors to display what products and services they have to offer, what they plan on offering in the future and what special developments they have planned. One of the vendors, Brenda Delle Palme of Wubs Transit had a booth to promote their school bus company offering bus charter services and school routes. Also pictured is Delle Palme’s grandson, Lincoln. Glover photo

WINCHESTER – The third and latest Local Business Expo at Winchester’s Joel Steele Community Centre has come and gone with over 90 vendors sharing the common goal of promoting the concept of shopping locally.

Main Street Clothing showed off their spring collection with a fashion show, Kristie Barkley handed out chances to win a tax-free day at Barkley’s Shoes and Accessories, the Winchester Kennels had cute dogs for greeting and Stacy Duguay of North Dundas Building Supplies was continuing to build connections after only six months in business.

The Winchester Market used the expo to their advantage to announce changes to their farmers’ market from last year, with a start date of Sun., May 19 and a new location across the street from Cup of Jo’s. The North Dundas Fire Services was handing out flyers about their future open houses throughout the township to hire more firefighters on Mon., June 3.

Mountain’s JWSD Evolution dance studio put on a number of electrifying performances throughout the day for the cheering crowd, showing off their impressive skills to hit music.

At the end of all the performances and presentations, Olympic kayaker, Michael Tayler came on the stage to speak out about his experience training for, and competing in the Olympics. He recounted a humourous story about how he was scheduled for an exam at the time he was supposed to go to London for the Olympics and the misunderstanding that took place.

“I had to go up to the teacher and basically tell them that I’m going to be in London on Tuesday during the exam and ask them to reschedule it,” he said. “They kind of looked at me like, ‘wait, so you’re going to watch the Olympics and you want to reschedule your exam? I don’t think we can do that.’ So, I had to tell them that I’m actually going to be competing and they finally understood.”

Tayler ended his presentation stating that he did eventually graduate from Carleton University in 2016 and is currently working for RBC.

And after all this, North Dundas Mayor Tony Fraser declared that this year’s event was the most successful Local Business Expo the township has seen since beginning three years ago.

“This expo has been another success, the numbers might not be in yet but I would hazard a guess that this has been the most successful of the three we’ve had,” he said. “It’s an event that continues to grow, the vendors’ feedback has been excellent, and we are currently looking towards the future and the 2020 Local Business Expo.”

Fraser believes that one of the reasons that this year’s expo was so successful is that council began to understand what was needed and what residents and vendors wanted out of the event.

“It wasn’t so much about what needed to be changed but needing to understand what we needed in order to improve,” he said. “The debriefing that went on last year helped us understand how to put out a better product. That’s the big difference, just understanding how to grow upon success from 2018.”