Oyama Fun Day was cancelled June 4 due to the spring flooding, but the event will be revived on Sunday as the Oyama Fall Fair.
The annual event is an important fundraiser for the Oyama Community Club, the volunteer-driven organization that oversees the community hall.
Deb Butler, a community club board member, said the flooding is largely why the fundraiser had to be kept alive this year.
“We had to find another time to keep the lights on at the hall this winter,” Butler said. “We haven’t done a fall fair for about 10 years now so we’ll see how it goes.
“The flooding caused some damage to our grounds but the majority of our rentals during and after the flooding had to be cancelled so we lost revenue that we otherwise would have had.”
The flooding turned the community hall baseball diamond into a veritable swamp, while the Royal Canadian Legion’s Oyama branch, a tenant in the hall’s ground floor, had to replace its flooring.
“The building we also oversee that houses the library and dress studio also had to have water pumps working and that water had to be diverted back towards the parking lot and the ball field because the district drainage lines were overwhelmed with flood runoff,” Butler said.
The damage to the Legion was covered by their insurance because a sump pump failed after being deluged with water, but the required repairs closed the branch for some six weeks.
“The Oyama Fall Fair is a chance for the Legion this year to host an open house to mark its re-opening,” she said.
The ball diamond remains a repair work in progress, unusable for Oyama Fall Fair activities this year.
Butler said originally the thought was the field would need to be recreated from scratch.
“The idea initially was we need to fill it all in, but the grass is now starting to come up, so we’re thinking if we aerate that grass area it might come back stronger next year. We’ll have to dig up and turn over the ball diamond dirt area, but that gives us an opportunity to maybe repurpose that space as it hasn’t been used as a ball-field now for years,” Butler said.
“There is an opportunity there to change it up a little bit.”
The Oyama Fall Fair will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The two signature activities will be the pancake breakfast from 9 to 11 a.m. and the parade down Oyama Road starting at noon followed by the opening of the hamburger concessions and farmers’ market.
Other activities will include story time at the library branch, 10:30 a.m.; bike decorating contest (meet at the general store), 11:30 a.m.; KidZone and scavenger hunt, 1 to 3 p.m.; apple eating contest, 1:30 p.m.; and release the chickens, 2 p.m.
