For the past 20 years, Maggie Barton and husband Ed Collins have organized the annual Robbie Burns Dinner at the Lefroy-Belle Ewart Legion.
And for 20 years, the event has attracted a full house to honour Scotland’s National Poet.
Calling it “our most successful event,” Legion president Mark Southcott thanked Barton and Collins for their efforts. He also thanked everyone who came out, year after year, to celebrate Robbie Burns’ birthday.
“Over the years, it’s been our guests who have made our event what it is,” Southcott said.
The head table this year included Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin and Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin. Members of the Innisfil Pipes & Drums piped the dignitaries into the hall, then ceremonially carried in the haggis - the traditional Scots pudding of offal, oatmeal and spices, at one time stuffed into a sheep's stomach.
George Restrup recited the Address to a Haggis, saluting Burns’ “Great Chieftain o the puddin’-race,” while Legionnaire Bob Stuart gave the Toast to the Lassies – both speaking in Burns’ broad Scots dialect, leaving many in the audience needing a translator.
Beverly Southcott responded – in English – with the Toast to the Laddies, and then the guests were served the traditional meal of roastit beef wi’ gravy, champit tatties, bashed neaps, and baps.
After dinner, which ended with tea or coffee and shortbread in the upper lounge, there was more entertainment by the Innisfil Pipes & Drums.
Southcott provided a brief and somewhat irreverent history of Robbie Burns’ life. Born in 1759, the son of poor tenant farmers, Burns struggled with work on the farm, hampered by poor health.
“When he was older, he found a better form of exercise,” said Southcott. “He fathered 14 children with six women.”
Past president Bill Van Berkel, in a kilt, proposed the toast to the Bard of Ayrshire, the Ploughman Poet: "To the rogue, the lover, the farmer - here’s to Robbie Burns!”
Burns died in 1796, at the age of only 37, but his poetry and tunes have remained popular and current. After dinner, guests sang what is probably Burns’ best-known song, Auld Lang Syne - filling the hall with the lyrics and melodies of Scotland’s Bard.
