Successful trade show highlights growing volunteer challenge for North Battleford Lions

The event is the Lions’ biggest fundraiser of the year and helps support the club’s work in the community. Jess said the organization gives back between $10,000 and $25,000 annually, depending on how much it raises.

Visitors attend the North Battleford Lions Club’s 18th annual trade show at the Battleford Arena on Aug. 15. The two-day event is the club’s biggest annual fundraiser and typically attracts between 1,000 and 1,500 people. (Image Credit: Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW)

The Lions support a range of causes, including services for people who are blind, reading materials for care homes and centres and Camp Easter Seal.

Jess said the event is also a testament to the club’s ability to keep the trade show going year after year.

“So we’re just lucky enough to have a bunch of regular vendors that keep coming back to the North Battleford show,” he said.

But behind the successful show is a relatively small group keeping it running.

Jess said the North Battleford Lions have about 10 to 12 active members, with roughly eight participating regularly. Some older members remain involved but are no longer physically able to handle jobs such as moving tables.

Family members, including grandchildren and in-laws, sometimes step in to help with the physical work required to put on the show.

Longtime Lions member Ellen-Mae Bishop said many members have already spent 20 or 30 years volunteering. She said most members are 70 and older, with only a few younger members.

“We need new volunteers, new blood, new ideas,” she said.

Longtime North Battleford Lions Club member Ellen-Mae Bishop during the club’s 18th annual trade show at the Battleford Arena on Aug. 15, 2026. (Image Credit: Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW)

For Bishop, bringing in younger members isn’t only about having more people available to help.

“It’s important to have new projects to be involved with, because it gives the younger people something that they’re interested in; they will work towards it,” she said. “So if we had new people in to give us new ideas, then we’d have new projects.”

“And they could be exciting.”

The challenge comes amid a broader decline in formal volunteerism across Canada.

According to Statistics Canada, about 32 per cent of Canadians aged 15 and older formally volunteered with charities and non-profits in 2023, down from 41 per cent in 2018. Volunteers were also contributing fewer hours than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the North Battleford Lions, having more volunteers could also make it easier to take on other community projects.

Bishop pointed to a diabetes information night the club organized in May. She said organizers initially expected about 50 people, but at least 100 attended, and people have since asked for the event to return next year.

“There’s a lot of work involved. But if I had more help, more volunteers, it wouldn’t have been a problem,” Bishop said.

“So when you’re relying on one or two people to do the majority of the work, it makes it that much more time-consuming for them. And the energy involved.”

Jess believes changing family lifestyles are contributing to the recruitment challenge. He said full-time work and children’s activities that increasingly involve travel leave many younger families with less time and money to volunteer.

“Everybody is so busy and if your kid is in dance or hockey or ball or something, that used to be a local thing,” Jess said. “Now these kids are in tournaments in Regina and in other provinces, and even down in the States. The parents just don’t have the time to volunteer or the money.”

The Lions continue to look for new members. The club meets on the first Tuesday of every month at the Battlefords Wildlife Federation centre at 7 p.m., and Jess said anyone interested is welcome to attend.

According to Lions Clubs International, the organization has 1.4 million members across 50,000 clubs serving communities in nearly every country. Its charitable arm, Lions Clubs International Foundation, has awarded more than US$1.3 billion in grants since it was established in 1968.

Bishop knows firsthand that sometimes a future Lion just needs to be asked.

She has been a member for about two decades but said that, before someone invited her to join, she had never considered joining.

“I wasn’t one to go forward and say, ‘I would like to be a lion.’ And unfortunately, I kind of prejudge people…’Would they make a good lion?'”

After two decades of volunteering, her view of who could become one is simple.

“Of course, everybody could be a good lion.”

—

Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmedia.com

by Kenneth Cheung

Successful trade show highlights growing volunteer challenge for North Battleford Lions

What's Trending