It was a day devoted to “Raising the Roof” at the new Dundas Manor, and from start to finish there were multiple opportunities for everyone to chip in a little. Seen above is balloon artist Mark Staughton who was doing his part to help raise money at Winchester’s Bike Night on Sat., Sept. 14. Tinkess Photo

WINCHESTER – You might not have believed it was possible to cram so many different activities into one day, but on Sept. 14 Winchester did and when all was said and done, they were still standing and already thinking about what comes next.

Sept. 14, you see, was a day devoted to “Raising the Roof” at the new Dundas Manor, and from start to finish there were multiple opportunities for everyone to chip in a little or perhaps even chip in a lot to help bring this extremely important community project to completion.

The day began with Fries for Charity at Foodland and the ever-popular Garden Party Market. Both these events led into a visit by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Golden Helmets precision motorcycle team who put on a display of their extremely skillful riding ability.

The wrap-up to what had been as perfect day as anyone could hope for began around 4:00 p.m. with the holding of the final Winchester Bike Night of 2024. It was also the only Bike Night to be held on a Saturday.

Obviously, the cause that this entire day had been built around was important, but in all the meetings and all the planning sessions held to allow everything to take place as scripted, it is difficult to imagine how well everything worked. Thanks to the efforts of the many, many volunteers and the generosity of all the sponsors, Winchester September Bike Night 2024 will certainly be one for the record books.

Vince Zandbelt, one of the original organizers of Bike Night found a few minutes to speak about the event and what had gone into making it happen. With this whole year wrapping up with the culmination of the evening’s event, how would he describe this year as opposed to any of the other years in which Bike Night took place?

“This year is 1,000 per cent better,” said Zandbelt, “Because we only got one out of four in last year and this year, we got three out of four. But this day just blows all the other ones out of the water, just with all the events we planned for and how it all came off. So, we’re very, very happy with that.”

Even if the only measure of success was the number of bikes that showed up, it would still be extraordinary. Zandbelt says they finally gave up trying to count them because there were just so many, and as well they weren’t just on the main streets. It was difficult to find a side street that wasn’t filled with all sorts of motorcycles. The final “guestimate” was that there was 3,500 or more.

Of course, the number of bikes isn’t the only measure of success. It was a day for Dundas Manor.

“There’s recognition that we do need a lot more community dollars,” said Zandbelt. “They’re $4.4 million short of their goal, so there’s lots of events going on to help out. We thought, let’s bring something special. Bring people in, there’s people, a lot of people from outside the area that don’t know what Dundas Manor is, and they’re contributing to our cause.

“It’s been a huge, huge undertaking to get this done. We’ve been planning for this for months on end for this particular show. We’ve got the other ones and gone out a little bit on autopilot, but this one here, there’s a lot more moving parts, because our committee also worked to get the Golden Helmets portion, right here.”

Zandbelt is quick to divert credit to what he described as a large army of volunteers, people who handled parking, to the gates, to crowd control to working at the various booths. “It’s all those people that really make this work,” he added, “And without them, you know, we couldn’t hold it together.

The other thing that we want to recognize too is that we could not do this without our sponsors. We always thank our sponsors, but realistically, we can’t do any of this without them.”

Sponsors were particularly important on this day, because the band that provided the musical entertainment, 21 Gun Salute, is an incredibly popular AC/DC tribute band, but they are also about three times the cost of other bands that have performed in the past. Fortunately, three local companies, Lannin Home Building Centre, Parcoll Products Ltd, and Rideau Auctions agreed to sponsor the entertainment.

So many volunteers, so many sponsors, and so many partnerships as well. With most of the downtown streets blocked for much of a beautiful Saturday afternoon, some consideration had to be given to the business in the area, so working in conjunction with the North Dundas Chamber of Commerce arrangements were made to allow parking on the east, centre, and west parts of town so that their regular customers could get to the businesses in these areas.

So many relationships, all pulling the same direction were necessary for this to work: The Township of North Dundas, SD and G Tourism, Ivan Lalonde, who’s connection with the Golden Helmets helped to secure their involvement, Kelly Windle’s Garden Party Market, Dan Pettigrew and Foodland who provided the cold drinks that The North Dundas Fire Service handed out, Dundas County Dairy producers who gave out free ice cream sandwiches, Connor Mockett who kept the rain away, former local NHL player Slater Koekkoek,  Sandra from Kiss FM, Mayor Tony Fraser, MPP Nolan Quinn, MP Eric Duncan, The Royal Canadian Legion, Bill’s Towing, (thank him for the bleachers where the Golden Helmets performed) and many, many, many more.

“The idea was to raise money, but also awareness,” said Zandbelt, “Because there might be some of the community that don’t realize there’s a shortfall, and we, as a community, we want this senior’s home. We all got to step in and contribute, whether it’s to an event like this or next week’s The Grand Parade.