Crowds, weather propel Fest of Ale
It was a pretty great weekend for Jacob Wideman, sales manager/server at Chilliwack’s Sidekick Brewery.
It started when he got to come to one of his favourite places in the province (Penticton) and one of his favourite beer festivals anywhere (Okanagan Fest of Ale).
It continued when he realized his brewery was one of very few to be stationed outdoors during what would ultimately be this region’s best weather stretch of the year.
Sold right out both Friday and Saturday -- that’s some 4,500 tickets in all -- the two-day 2024 Fest of Ale, a hybrid indoor/outdoor celebration of brews and ciders at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre, was once again the monster it always seems to be.
But this year, with temps in the high teens by Saturday afternoon, plenty of live music, and folks happily breaking out of their winter doldrums, the event’s sun-drenched “Hop Yard,” a fenced adult playpen on the lawn between the PT&CC and Power Street, was clearly the place to be.
And for Sidekick, the cherry on top came at 3 p.m. when festival judges announced they’d selected its “Ink Slinger Suzuna” as the event’s best hop-forward lager.
Suddenly, the line-up to reach the Sidekick taps jumped from a half-dozen to 40-plus. It stayed that way for an hour or more.
Such are the benefits of a Fest of Ale victory -- more sales, more industry and public credibility and more attention. In all, 15 judged awards were handed out Saturday, and each likely spurred similar crowd explosions at various spots throughout the grounds.
The affable Wideman called
Fest of Ale “super important” and looked truly excited when he said Sidekick had signed up for both Fests since its late-2022 creation, and won awards at each.
He hopes for another when Sidekick “definitely” returns in 2025.
In all, 68 beer and cider vendors and 12 food vendors from across the province attended the 27th F-of-A iteration. As did all those guests. It was enough to make co-organizer Sarah Taylor feel downright giddy.
“Honestly, this was the best event I’ve ever attended and I’ve ever organized,” she said in the quiet of Sunday morning. “Mainly because the weather was on our side. When that happens, the vibe is amazing.
“It’s the best atmosphere for day drinking in the sun. The outdoor area was packed, and indoors was packed too because that’s where so much of the beer was. There were no incidents and everyone seemed to be in such a great mood.”
Even now the 2024 event isn’t really over. In the coming months the board of directors of the non-profit Fest of Ale Society will decide where they’ll send tens of thousands of dollars.
“Each year we figure how much our profits are,” said Taylor, “and we put together a grant funding program in the fall. We go through applicants and divvy up the cash to deserving charities that are all located in the south Okanagan.”
The Fest of Ale has given away $805,000 to local charities over the years. This year the board expects to once again award approximately $50,000.
But late Saturday afternoon, no one was thinking about that. The festival was still in full swing and now it was time for what were arguably the most important awards of all – the ones voted on by the public. It was time to announce the trio of 2024 People’s Choice Awards.
When the dust had settled, it was Penticton’s Highway 97 Brewing picking up the vaunted “Best Beer” prize with its wildly unique “Dreamweaver Strawberries and Cream Wheat Ale.”
Oliver’s Howling Moon Craft Cidery nabbed the “Best Cider” award with its “Lavender Plum Craft Cider,” while Penticton’s
H&L Dumpling House, a small dumpling-centric eatery in Cherry Lane Shopping Centre, scored a surprise “Best Food and Food Vendor” win.
“They beat Brodo Kitchen by a very tight margin,” smiled Sarah Taylor of the H&L victory. “It was a tiny booth, but everyone just loved their dumplings.”
And that left Taylor with one final sentiment -- a sentiment likely shared by event organizers across the city.
“You know, it takes a small village to run Fest of Ale,” she said. “And I just want to give a huge thanks to our volunteers. There were a hundred of them here this weekend and we couldn’t have done it without them.”
Editor’s Note: Last week, The Daily Courier’s 50 years ago feature recounted a strange incident in Peachland in April 1974 when Harold Thwaite, a former mayor, punched out an alderman during a town council meeting. Here’s a slightly edited version of a column, written by Courier reporter Ron Seymour in 2018, that gives a fuller picture of the life and interesting times of Thwaite.
The Peachland town election in 1975 was a bitterly contested battle that featured flip-flopping newspaper headlines, allegations of electoral hanky-panky, citizens demanding a recount, judicial intervention, and an overturned result.
But what I really love about this story is that it was two reporters who saved the day for democracy, ensuring the duly elected Peachland mayor took office.
Unfortunately, that candidate was
Harold Thwaite.
Thwaite had been the combative mayor of Peachland for several years before the 1975 election. He lorded over the town with an imperial style that both amused and frightened onlookers.
Once, during a Peachland council meeting that wasn’t going to his liking, Thwaite punched Ald. Des Loan. That netted Thwaite an assault charge and a conviction. Don Wilson, Peachland’s historian, recalled last week that the incident also resulted in Thwaite having to compensate Loan.
“That punch cost Harold a few thousand dollars,” Wilson said. “Loan got enough money out of the settlement to take his family to Hawaii for a vacation.”
Another time, Thwaite paid $700 to have a mayoral chain of office made for himself, after town council balked at the cost.
Thwaite tried to have Queen Elizabeth hang it around his neck when Liz was visiting the Okanagan. Thwaite hadn’t actually been invited to the royal reception, but he somehow got within groping distance of the Queen at Kelowna’s airport before being hustled away by bodyguards.
Peter Scott, then a columnist for The Daily Courier, wrote that Peachland town council was like a year-round circus with Thwaite the ringmaster and chief barker.
“He bullies, he sulks, goes into histrionics and belches forth fire and brimstone when crossed,” Scott wrote.
“He is an anachronism. He would have done very well prior to the invention of democracy,” Scott wrote.
Unsurprisingly, Thwaite’s freewheeling style and penchant for verbally and physically assaulting his opponents discouraged many people from running against him for mayor.
Simply put, people were afraid of
Harold Thwaite, a former Peachland mayor who once punched an alderman at a town council meeting, drawing a conviction for assault, is shown at an unidentified event in 1985. Thwaite, a former soldier.
But in the fall of 1975, Peachland Chamber of Commerce president Bernice Fletcher summoned up the courage to run against King Harold.
Backed by the town’s business community, who believed Thwaite’s embarrassing antics were making Peachland a laughingstock, Fletcher ran an aggressive campaign. She and her supporters knocked on practically every door, urging voters to finally turf Thwaite.
But it’s a curious fact of life in a democracy that the more outrageously a leader behaves, the more some people love him. Generally, these people are shallow, apolitical and unserious -people for whom politics is just a form of entertainment.
People like me. I would have voted for Thwaite, if only to see how bizarre things might become under his leadership.
So Thwaite had his troops and both sides -- the sane and the insane -- went marching to the polls on election day, Nov. 15, 1975. Turnout was heavy and there was much anticipation surrounding the outcome.
But before the counting of ballots began, the chief electoral officer, Hamish MacNeill, took ill and went home. He left the counting in the hands of two deputies, Harry Lever and Myrtle McLoughlin, both town employees.
After they had tallied the ballots, they pronounced Fletcher the victor, winning by a margin of 473 to 414. This result surprised two radio reporters, Jack Marion of CKOV and Bev Sinclair of CKIQ, who were keeping track of the count after the results of each ballot were called out.
By their tally, Thwaite had won the election by about 10 votes. But the returning officers insisted their count was correct, and the headline in the following day’s Courier read “Fletcher Victory.” She was quoted as saying, “I am mayor-elect.”
But it was discovered the next morning the ballot boxes had not been locked and sealed after the counting was complete, as was required by law.
And there remained the puzzling inconsistency between the officials’ count and the numbers produced by the reporters.
Thwaite pounced on the irregularities and uncertainties, immediately suggesting foul deeds had been done.
“I am going to suspend Lever and McLoughlin for rank inefficiency. I am going to have the election declared invalid. I want to keep Peachland absolutely honest,” Thwaite thundered.
Thwaite claimed the “mafia” had infiltrated Peachland, arranging to stuff the unlocked and unsealed ballot boxes.
“This really smells,” he said. Both sides brought in lawyers and, for a while, Peachland was locked in the grip of an electoral crisis.
In Peachland, this crisis took the form of some very heated debate at the Totem Inn as to which novelty menu item should be removed first -- the Fletcher Fish Burger or the Thwaite Pig Knuckle Sandwich.
A few days after the election, a formal recount was done by Kamloops Judge Patrick Dohm. His count produced a six-vote victory for Thwaite over Fletcher, 447 to 441.
So the radio reporters had been right -- or at least far more right than the official ballot counters.
How they could have so badly added up the ballots, giving Fletcher a 58vote victory when she actually lost the election, is anybody’s guess, but MacNeill came to the defence of his assistants.
“They were just tired, which may have caused some of the confusion,” he said. “They had worked almost 12 hours. There was no hanky-panky, as the mayor has suggested.”
Thwaite, no surprise, was jubilant at his re-election.
“I’ve served with the Armed Forces in Korea, Cyprus, Vietnam and the Middle East, defending democracy. I’m happy it could be carried out in the recount of the ballots. The vote indicated I was the people’s choice for mayor.”
And, of course, he couldn’t resist a dig at his opponents.
“They canvassed every home but could not beat honesty and experience,” he said.
As for Fletcher herself, Thwaite said with typical ungraciousness: “I have nothing to say about Mrs. Fletcher. She doesn’t interest me one particle.”
Thwaite went on to serve out his sixth two-year term as Peachland mayor. Before he died in 1999, at age 87, he was a frequent and sharp critic of all those who succeeded him in council chambers, variously calling them bums, liars and fools.
“I was the most brilliant mayor Peachland ever had,” Thwaite told me in 1996.
I didn’t argue with him. After all, he was elected six times. Plus, he was pretty good with his fists.