The sun has risen on a classic mode of entertainment in the Foothills.
The folks behind the High River Sunset Drive-In have brought back the nostalgia of a drive-in theatre on the High River Ag Grounds where they host a wide array of entertainment options, a stage that couldn’t have been set without a community of helping hands.
“It’s just amazing how many people come to the table when we really needed them,” says Wes Shaw, who co-owns the High River Sunset Drive-In with Roger Hamel.
“This thing developed from showing it on a kitchen sheet to having one of the largest screens in Western Canada and all just because people stepped up and wanted to help.”
The seeds were planted for setting up the drive-in several years ago through fundraising discussions as members of the River City Classics car club.
“It was brought up that we should do a car wash or do something to raise money,” Shaw says. “Somebody said we should do an old-fashioned drive-in and Roger Hamel and I stuck up our hand and said, ‘I think we can make something work.’”
The original set up has gone through a few evolutions, starting with a little projector used for safety classes at Shaw’s office. Hamel then got a deal on a screen and a projector.
“It turns out those blow-up screens in Alberta just don’t last in these big windstorms,” Shaw says with a laugh. “The first night we set it up it blew into the trees and poked holes in it and that was pretty much the end of that.”
Further down the road, Hamel was able to acquire sea-cans, which would then be welded together, as part of the production.
Initial trepidation over the cost of construction was alleviated with an amazing amount of community support, Shaw adds.
Everything from putting piles down, engineering, welding, crane services to siding, fencing, plywood and paint, including the labour involved, was either received at significantly discounted deals or the costs were donated entirely.
“Once they heard what we were trying to accomplish and what we were going for they just stepped right up and donated,” he says.
The construction process was relatively quick running from May to July, with movies being shown in August of that same summer.
“We didn’t do a lot of hustling to get these people, they just heard about it, phoned us and said, ‘We want to be a part of this.’ I think that says a lot about High River and district, everything we’ve ever done has been like that,” Shaw says.
The drive-in offers double features beginning early August. Weather-dependent, with the sun setting at a decent time and the temperatures reasonable, the theatre typically runs into October and opens again in the spring.
The first weekend of the summer season boasted a double-bill of The Bad News Bears and The Sandlot followed by the Paul Blart Mall Cop series. Other titles on the playbill this summer include Jumanji, Twister, Legally Blonde and Cruella.
The sound for the feature films is transmitted through the radio dial in vehicles on 105.9 FM.
The weekend double billings at the drive-in, a not-for-profit organization, come with a considerable charitable component as upwards of 32 charities in High River and Foothills County have been supported by the undertaking.
“We’ll go to the charities and say what weekends do you want and some of them have special weekends, some don’t really care, but we try to accommodate them as well as we can,” Shaw says. “They have to show up that night, we ask for six volunteers to park cars and help out. It’s an hour and a half or two hours and they’re done for the night.
“We pool the money and then at the end of the year we’ll add it all up and have a little get together and divide the money up.”
Awareness and community building amongst the organizations has also developed out of the creation of the drive-in, he adds.
“And I think it’s really helped the charities, they’ve really got together now and helped each other,” Shaw adds. “Whereas for the longest time, they didn’t know there were that many in town and now they team up together, they’ll do projects together, it’s been pretty awesome.”
He says every effort is made to match the theme of the movies with the charity of choice.
“The movies aren’t the first ones out by any means, but we try to keep them updated as much as we can,” Shaw says. “We get a list of movies from the different suppliers and we get a choice of them. We’ll give the charities four choices and they can pick two out of the four if it suits them better.
“We then pre-buy these movies, which is a bit of a pain. Once we buy them, we own them and we’ve only got a certain amount of time to play them because they give us a secret code to download them.
“We’ve learned a lot in four years, I’ll tell you that.”
Shaw says the owners would like members of the community to take on the project in the future, noting both have full-time careers in heavy hauling equipment and excavating, respectively.
“We only built this thing to give it back to the community,” he says. “We’re hoping someone will step up and help it move along. I think it would work better as community-owned and run facility rather than us two.”
With the theatre getting off the ground during the pandemic, Shaw says there was some fortune with the timing as it was deemed a safe, mostly outdoor activity by local health officials.
“It was good and bad timing,” he says. “I know even my own kids in their 30s, they never experienced a drive-in, and now they helped build it, they’re just about here every weekend and they just enjoy meeting the people.”
The community of people that attend the drive-in is another aspect that’s driven its popularity.
“Roger and I stay here every weekend, the both of us, just to help the different charities with parking the cars and answering any questions they have,” he says. “We spend a lot of time, just the two of us, talking with people and asking them if they’ve ever been here before, if they’ve ever been to a drive-in and what they think of it.
“They come from Edmonton, from Medicine Hat, it’s just amazing. All over the province, they’ve heard about us. It’s just an evening out, they’ll come down from Edmonton, get a motel room and stay the weekend, so it’s good for High River that way, they’re not just here for the drive-in, they’re all over. And I think people just want to experience that, coming to the big screen.”
Shaw says the feedback has been universally positive from the get-go, other than maybe the odd request for first-run movies.
“I always tell the story where I met a couple at the gate here, a really young girl and an older gentleman and I was teasing him about bringing such a young date,” Shaw says. “Of course, he was so proud it was his granddaughter and she had never been to a drive-in before, and he couldn’t stop talking about how when he was younger, he and his wife would go to the drive-in and take the kids and they would fall asleep in the back.
“He was just so happy he could bring her and share that experience.”
Growing up in Airdrie, Shaw says he has fond memories of the old drive-in on 17th Avenue in Calgary.
The land value to run a drive-in in an urban centre has been prohibitive for many other locations, he adds, noting the Sunset Drive-In owners are fortunate to have a good deal on the edge of town.
“It’s not a money-maker by any means,” Shaw says with a laugh. “But it’s a community thing, that’s for sure.
“It’s getting out there more and more, people are hearing about the drive-in and it’s a good weekend (activity).”
This summer the theatre has been used for a large-scale cornhole tournament with the stage previously used for everything from charity concerts headlined by country crooner George Canyon to full-fledged dance recitals.
“The Town has been really good throughout all of this,” Shaw says. “Of course, they’ve got rules and regulations they have to follow, but we’ve had a lot of meetings with them lately and they’re really on our side about helping us have do more events out here without so much paperwork.”
Shaw says there’s ongoing communication with the Town of High River on using the facility for more types of events in the future with the potential for expansion of a track that could benefit those putting on car shows, those involved in the burgeoning film and television industry in the area to the idea of putting together pickleball courts.
“Because June and July, the days or so long, we can’t run the movies through there,” Shaw says. “So we’re trying to fill those months in and this is some of the stuff we’ve come up with.”
With the Call of the West Museum, Eamon’s Garage and rodeo grounds all located on the High River Ag Grounds, Shaw says the idea is to take advantage of the all-in-one destination.
“We think this is a great area of town that people can come and see a lot of stuff,” he says. “It helps the museum a lot if people are staying here.
“We’re trying to get more camping out here, but that’s again one of those technical problems that wasn’t in our land-use agreement. We can handle quite a bit out here.”
