A community tradition came back to life in Elrose over the weekend.
July 25-27, 2025, marked the return of "Elrose Homecoming" weekend, the culmination of years of planning, as the community grew a sizeable amount in population with current, and past community members joining interested Elrose visitors for three days of celebration.
Activities on Friday included a free swim, movie night, and a dance at the memorial hall. Saturday was packed with events from 8:30 AM all the way until the fireworks show at 11:00 PM. Another dance at the Uniplex went until 2:00 AM, leading into Sunday's pancake breakfast, open museum day, and church service before three high flying Global FMX Motocross performances put an end to things in the afternoon.
Related Stories:
With the highly anticipated weekend now in the books, chairman of the homecoming committee Dane MacDonald says it was hard to narrow down any one thing as his favourite.
"I couldn't put my finger on one thing... There were so many activities to see and do, and there was no one thing that I think anybody would pick as an overall favourite."
While MacDonald may be right, one thing everyone can agree on is that the weather held up nicely.
"Honestly, we couldn't have ordered better weather if we tried. The weather cooperated immensely," he said, as temperatures stayed balmy and rain stayed timely. "There was a rain shower that came through Saturday night, but it was after our fireworks show was done. Everything else about our weekend weather wise was perfect."
The nice days had to have helped out the overall attendance. MacDonald mentioned that over 800 people actually registered for the event, but the actual number of people frequenting Elrose was over 1000.
The ball diamonds were also extra busy with a 10-team tournament. Joining the softball action, in true homecoming fashion was a Elrose Aces alumni baseball game featuring five decades of players!
Putting the fruits of their labour behind them, MacDonald shared that the Elrose Homecoming 2025 committee started back in November of 2023.
It began with the goals of not only bringing people back home to celebrate, but to potentially restart a community tradition.
"In the past, homecomings in Elrose were held every five years. It's something that we will talk about in the future to see if we can get back on that same schedule," mentioned MacDonald in his follow up. "That is a discussion the committee will have when we wrap up and have our closing meetings."
For the time being, MacDonald just wanted to give a big thanks from the committee to everyone that attended.
"We would like to say on behalf of the committee, thank you to everybody who attended the event, and thank you to all of the volunteers who played their part in the weekend.
"It was another great weekend to be from Elrose."