The Watch Lake-Green Lake Community Association held an open house to celebrate new renovations to the Watch Lake Community Hall last weekend.
The renovations consist of a new gazebo, a repainted main hall and outside ground improvements. Around 60 people attended the celebratory open house on Oct. 12 in which food and drinks were served as attendees got to tour the hall.
Ed Kendall, a director for the Watch Lake-Green Lake Community Association, said the renovations were completed to bring the hall up to the "21st century."
"We need to have more people involved and make it nicer for the community," Kendall said.
Kendall explained that the renovation was done in stages and that the total cost was just under $30,000. The new gazebo alone cost around $19,000 in free labour while repairs to the hall were done for $5,000. Funding to fix the hall was provided by a grant from the Cariboo Regional District along with community fundraising efforts, such as the association's fishing derbies.
The new gazebo is dedicated to a longtime member of the community, Robert Coulton who passed away tragically in 2022. Kendall said Coulton was his best friend and even a pseudo-father figure, who donated to the gazebo that now bears his name before his death.
"He used to fish Watch Lake all the time. We spent countless hours out there fishing and he was great friends to people around the neighbourhood," Kendall recalled. He says that dedicating the gazebo to Coulton was the right thing to do.
Within the gazebo during the open house, Clinton's Blue Wranglers provided their signature country bluegrass and western folk music. Dustin Bentall, the lead guitarist of the band, helped construct the gazebo for the community hall after being asked to do so this summer.
"I milled all the timbers that are placed out on Big Bar Road - and we prefabbed a lot of it and trucked it over here, and assembled it in late August, I believe," Bentall recalled, about how the gazebo was built. "It was really fun to build, and it's a thrill to be here today, watching it being used by the community."
This is not the first time the Watch Lake Community Hall has been renovated - in the 1970s the hall had a large frame addition added that was built and paid for by the community club as well as the Watch Lake and District Women's Institute, who had also, in 1998, raised $23,000 to replace the original hall. Further improvements in 2014 saw new kitchens, indoor washrooms and environmental renovations, according to a promotion that was on display at the Community Hall during the open house.
The director of the Watch Lake Women's Institute, Karin Forbes says she loves the new renovations done to the hall.
"They look absolutely fantastic."
