REGINA – Put on those dancing shoes.
There will be ample opportunity to use them in the Agribition #building of Regina’s Exhibition Park on June 26.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool is celebrating its 75th birthday this summer and festivities include a day of music, dance and reunion in the place where the pool was born.
Billed as The World’s Biggest Barn Dance, the day is expected to raise money for The Pool Foundation, a non-profit funding body that provides assistance to towns of less than 10,000 people that want to build or maintain community spaces.
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When it comes to dancing, prairie people have a strong and long heritage. The sounds of warbling fiddles once filled school houses. Then there were the solidarity socials of the Second World War. Country music and rock ‘n’ roll now sounds in high schools and modern community centres.
Sask Pool hopes to set a world record for the largest number of dancers ever to kick up their heels on a single dance floor.
“We aren’t going to say how many we expect to show up for the dance. The more the better. We want to fill the Canada Centre building with dancers … . We’ll need to keep it up (dancing) for five or so minutes to set a record,” said Paul Woolley, of Sask Pool. The Johner Brothers, a Saskatchewan country music band, will provide the tunes.
The facility could accommodate up to 3,000 people.
Before packing the dance floor, the day will include pancake brunch with SWP board members flipping the flapjacks, trade shows and children’s programs. A beef supper followed by an all-Canadian lineup of three country music musicians, Paul Brant, Michelle Wright and Charlie Major, will round out pre-dance festivities.
The event is open to all current and former SWP staff members, pool members, their families and guests.
“In a province of one million people, where there are 70,000 pool members and 3,000 staff, this means that just about everybody has some link to the pool,” said Woolley.
