It’s taken countless hours of meetings and phone calls to work with vendors and the entertainment but it’s finally here, the first Onion Fest in Innisfil.
From June 17 to 19 at the Innisfil Recreation Complex, there will be live music, local vendors, rides, food trucks, a beverage garden, and both an amateur BBQ competition and the Canadian Rib Championships.
Innisfil Community Events Corporation (ICE Corp.), a community group that aims to bring Innisfil together through social events, has been working towards the first Onion Fest for months.
“It’s been a lot of effort,” said Chris Reynolds, 1st Chair of ICE Corp. “It’s basically a year-round project. We started booking bands last year and booking the midway six months in advance. Once we’re done here, on Monday we’ll be planning for 2023.”
Reynolds says the group's experience bringing events to the town has helped them prepare for this weekend's large event.
“ICE Corp. has a strong history of putting on events in the Town of Innisfil, so we have a good reputation,” he said. “With branding the new name, the marketing side is the toughest part, and getting the message out there that we have all these fun activities booked for the weekend to encourage people to come out and enjoy it.”
With good food and cold beverages at the ready for residents as they take in top tier entertainment, Reynolds believes the weekend is poised to be a success.
“We’ve got the Canadian Rib Championships going on all weekend, so if you love ribs, we’ll have some delicious fall of the bone ribs and lots of other food vendors,” he said. “With the midway we’ve got a kid’s zone, on Saturday we have a hot air balloon coming in so people can go up in that. There’s just so many activities from start to finish.”
As things get back to normal after the last few years of COVID-19 restrictions, those behind Onion Fest see it as a great opportunity for the people of Innisfil and surrounding communities to get together again for a weekend of fun.
“When things started opening up, we kicked it into high gear to get this off the ground,” Reynolds explained. “There’s lot of excitement and people want to get out there and enjoy themselves for a change. We’re all super excited and we hope the community is too. It’s shaping up to be a great weekend.”
An event like Onion Fest has numerous volunteers working behind the scenes, with plans to make it a yearly tradition. Reynolds says as soon as the first one concludes they’ll be looking at how to make the next one even better.
“We’ll do a post-op meeting with our partners and go over the pros and cons and start planning for the next one in 2023,” he said. “We’ll work out the kinks to see what we can build on and what new things we can bring next year to Innisfil and the people of Simcoe County. It all starts with bringing the people of Innisfil a weekend they’ll enjoy. We want to make this bigger and better every year.”