The Edwin Community Hall hummed on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025, as a couple of hundred neighbours and former residents packed in for the annual fall supper in Edwin, Man., a hamlet southwest of Portage la Prairie. The draw? Classic Thanksgiving comfort food, but the purpose is bigger: funding the hall and stitching the community together through volunteer power. Planning a small-town feast “Well, it's very hard to decide because some years we get up as high as 250 people. Some years we are around 175. So it's hard to plan for it, but you've got to plan for the most and hope. That's about all you can do,” Treasurer Sherry Thiessen says, noting that they do get some idea through keeping records of attendance from the year prior. "We actually assign people to cook things, assign people to do various different jobs, about a month, maybe five weeks in advance.” Thiessen continues, “And then we start going and looking for the appropriate foods that we need and try and find out where we can get them at the best prices. Usually we shop local in Portage as best we can.” By late afternoon, a lineup stretches straight out the front doors—estimated at roughly 30 to 40 feet at times—as volunteers inside the hall kept plates moving and coffee pouring. On the floor and in the kitchen, roughly 20 people handle service, dishwashing, and top-ups, with a few more behind the scenes than most diners realize. What it takes to feed a crowd The menu reads like prairie comfort: items like roasted turkey and ham beside mounds of mashed potatoes with gravy, with veggies like carrots and corn rounding out the plates, and a parade of homemade desserts to finish. Thiessen says, “I know that we ordered 80 pounds of turkey. We've got 35 pounds of rutabagas, 50 pounds of ham, and I'd say that's about 20 dozen buns.” She adds, “And that's above all the other stuff, like the carrots and the corn and all the other things that we have. And the desserts, we don't have to pay for them because they're straight out of the community. Most of them are home cooked desserts supplied by different people in the community that drop them off. Potatoes are supplied by community, all kinds of stuff. We are a absolute community hall.” More than supper: How a place stays a place The hall itself is a piece of history—once a two-room schoolhouse, now the beating heart of local gatherings. “This building behind me here was the center of the community; it was the old two-room schoolhouse. After the schools amalgamated, it became the community hall. So that was back in the 60s, I believe.” Thiessen explains. For many, fall supper is the excuse to slow down and reconnect. “Some of [the people here] are community people coming to support us, and they get in the hall and they're like, 'Oh, there's my neighbour and there's a neighbour I haven't seen since spring when we were doing the planting and stuff'. A lot of them are people who were from here, grew up here. They come back for the supper just to meet up with old friends and old neighbors.” The pull even crosses provincial lines—and draws family from the city to pitch in. Thiessen notes that, “I got surprise phone calls from area code 306 today. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I hope you're not driving all the way from Saskatchewan for this. I hope you're passing through.” Thiessen even noted that her own son and grandchildren were coming out from St. Vital just to attend the supper, just because they enjoyed the idea of experiencing such a tight-knit and welcoming community. When the last plates were finally cleared and the coffee urns empty, Edwin proved the recipe still works: plan hard, show up for each other, and save room for dessert—because that’s how a hall, and a hometown, stays warm all year. Sign up to get the latest local news headlines delivered directly to your inbox every afternoon. Send your news tips, story ideas, pictures, and videos to news@portageonline.com. PortageOnline encourages you to get your news directly from your trusted source by bookmarking this page and downloading the PortageOnline app.