Every year, hungry attendees of the Squamish Days Loggers Sports Festival take a break from the action and line up for slow-roasted beef cooked over an open flame, served on a warm bun with onions and horseradish.
Now, this over-50-year Squamish Rotary Club fundraiser may not happen this summer, and won’t look the same going forward.
According to Glenn McEachran and Henry Marsden, the Rotary Club’s co-presidents, they were told earlier this year by the fire department that the club was no longer allowed to operate the open flame it uses to roast the beef. This comes after several years in which the club received last-minute reprieves from the district’s fire restrictions, allowing it to host the BBQ with an open fire as usual.
“The fire department has been pretty generous in giving us the permit every year, but they’ve made it very, very clear that that’s never gonna happen again,” said Marsden.
The Rotary Club uses its profits to support local charities and community groups. In the best-case scenario, the change will be dramatic, said McEachran, but the club is exploring ways to keep the event alive.
“We’re basically looking at options that go from everything from purchasing or constructing a different barbecue system, to at least this year outsourcing it,” said Marsden.
As a stopgap, the club hopes to adapt its recipe and process, using off-site ovens and bringing the cooked meat back to the Squamish Days grounds. The scale of that task is considerable, given that in 2023 the club cooked over 1,600 lbs of beef and served more than 2,600 sandwiches with the help of dozens of volunteers.
They are testing recipes using this process in early May, but cannot confirm it will be ready in time for this year’s BBQ.
For McEachran, the BBQ is a high point of the club’s year. He’s been helping out since he joined in 1998, when longtime volunteers, each with a specific role whether slicer, fire maintainer, or sauce keeper, showed him the ropes.
“It’s a passing down of tradition,” McEachran said. “Now I’m one of the old guys who people come to ask what to do.”
Marsden said the club is asking for the community’s patience as it works through its options. “We’re definitely committed to continuing the tradition as best we can,” he said.
According to the co-presidents, there’s no villain in this story.
“It’s nobody’s fault other than climate change,” said McEachran. “The fire marshal is doing their job, and they’re being responsible. We get it completely. The Rotary Club will do our very best to continue this tradition in some form. We just don’t know what that’ll be yet.”
The club expects to have a clearer picture following the May offsite cooking tests.
