By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle

The final figure is in and the Osoyoos Rotary Club’s wildly popular Lobster on the Beach charity event brought in a record $28,874 thanks to generous donations and healthy bidding at the live auction.

The event, which was held on the evening of Sept. 10, raised far more money than expected with Rotary’s Larry Stone saying the expectation was around $20-22,000. “So we came in substantially higher than what we had allowed for in the original budget. The big reason was because we had three or four big live auction prizes that went for a large amount of money.”

This included a Transwest-sponsored helicopter ride for six people, a two-hour ride on a 42-foot catamaran and a wine fridge stocked with 48 bottles of wine. “Between the three of these they went for almost $8,000 so that’s really where we made money,” Stone said. 

The final figure was also bumped up by a $5,000 donation by FortisBC about two weeks before the event alongside a $1,000 donation by an Osoyoos resident alongside numerous companies that donated. 

He adds none of this would have mattered if the lobster fest participants hadn’t “dug deep” into their pockets during the auction. “After we counted the money and did the recap we were just thrilled with the amount that we brought in and the people that were there really dug deep into their pockets to support the Rotary Club,” he said.

After the two-year pandemic-induced hiatus people were clearly itching to get back to the lobster fun, with Stone saying they had to turn the lights off at around midnight in order to end the party. The Rotary volunteers after all, had another half hour at least of cleaning to do. 

In fact the party was so lively that the 6m by 6m dancefloor quickly became too small and one wall of the tent was removed so that people could go out on the grass and dance. “At one point we had 50 or 60 people out dancing on the grass and muscian Diane Ball just had the crowd going crazy. They were up dancing and whooping and hollering and it was just a great time!”

The feedback was clearly positive with the consensus being it was the best Lobster on the Beach yet, with everyone happy to see it back again after the two-year hiatus with COVID.”

Because of the inability to hold fundraising events over the past two years Rotary has a whole laundry list of projects that have been parked until now. “We’ve got a whole bunch of projects that we’ve been looking at over the past couple of years but we haven’t determined exactly where the money will go,” Stone said, adding this will be the task of the Rotary Club of Osoyoos Board over the coming weeks. 

Part of the money will likely go to Rotary’s commitment to fund the multipurpose room at the Osoyoos Museum. The service organization had previously committed to $30,000 spread over five years, and as such Stone said this year’s $6,000 installment will probably be drawn from the lobster party fundraising.

Overall the funding will “definitely go a long way to help with the programs that we have sponsored in the past and it will all go to various programs existing and new,” he said. 

And don’t worry, Lobster on the Beach will return next year as Stone himself has already trekked over to Town Hall to book Gyro Park for Sept. 10, 2023!