INNISFAIL – Volunteers will be roaming a blocked-off downtown this weekend getting ready for a show that features both beauty and muscle.
The Innisfail Kinsmen Car Show is set for Sunday, Aug. 28.
The annual car show, which has been rebranded a few times over the years, will be held on a closed-off 50th Street in downtown Innisfail between 49th to 51st avenues, as well as on a few side streets.
The flashiest and most impressive collectors’ vintage cars will start to roll in from 7:30 to 8 a.m. to get a good spot. There is a $10 donation to enter a car for the show and free admission for all spectators.
The event is a fundraiser for the local Kinsmen. The service club does not have a specific project targeted, but the always-active Kinsmen are sure to find a need soon.
“It’s never ending,” said Russ Klemmer, secretary of the Innisfail Kinsmen and co-chair of the event with well-known car dealer Alistair Loughlin.
The car show officially begins at 9 a.m. Trophy presentations for about eight different classes of vintage vehicles is at 2:30 p.m. The event will wrap-up an hour later.
The car show will have food trucks, along with Golden Mini Donuts that is hosting a scavenger hunt for children from three to 10-years-old. The event for kids will be directed by scavenger hunt ambassadors stationed at a tent set up by Innisfail-based Halia's Helium Events face painting booth.
“There’s lots of opportunity for the young ones to come out and if they're not into cars they can do this scavenger hunt,” said Klemmer.
Once a two-day event, the car show – formerly known as Weekend of Wheels or a variant moniker from 2011 to 2019 – is now a one-day event, with the 100-foot shootout but due to problems of finding enough volunteer support the shootout was taken out and the show became just one day.
There was no show in 2020 as it was a pandemic casualty. Last year, the event – rebranded as the Innisfail Kinsmen Car Show – was held but under COVID restrictions. The show at the time attracted 50 cars on a day when the weather did not cooperate all that well.
In 2019, the show before the first year of the pandemic in 2020 and named the Innisfail Kinsmen and Kinettes Weekend of Wheels, attracted close to 200 vintage cars.
“We are hoping for 200 (cars) again. If the weather holds out, we’ll get that,” said Klemmer of this year’s Aug. 28 event. “I think a lot of the car owners open the blinds in the morning and if it's a sunny day they'll bring it out. If it's cloudy and maybe rainy, they're going to keep them in their garage.
“They don't want to get them all wet and have to detail them again,” he added. “We understand that we're at the mercy of Mother Nature.”
