Fall Fair - Ioco Ghost town days

I found my self this Sunday as I always do at the beginning of October baking dozens of cookies for children (some larger than others) to decorate with icing and sprinkles and then quickly consume. It was Ioco Ghost town days.

The Imperial Oil Company had a company town called Ioco  From around the turn of the last century up until the  late 60's.  This was a true company town with it 's own bowling green, tennis courts, social centre, school and church.  It was situated just outside the gates of the oil refinery on the Burrard Inlet.



Nearly all the houses are now gone the school is boarded up and the grounds where the social centre bowling green and tennis courts were is now a large sloping grassy field, and the land long ago became a part of  Port Moody.  It is in fact almost a ghost town with the just the paved roads and empty lots where the local youth take their first tentative forays into driving along with their nervous parents.

It was the vision of a very strong willed very energetic women Maryann Cooper  to remember and honour this place with what she dubbed the Ioco Ghost town days. Due mostly to her stubborn determination this event is now a popular fall event for the local community, and brings the grassy field back to life one day a year.

About 7 or 8 years a go I was asked if I could man the Pleasantside Community Association table, (yes I live in a place called Pleasantside) I couldn't say no and asked what they wanted me to do, "up to you".  So of course I came up with something food related.

This year like every other I cooked 6 0r 7 dozen brown sugar cookies.  Just your basic sugar cookies but instead of white sugar I used brown this gives the cookies a lovely golden colour and a slightly caramel flavour

Cookies waiting to be decorated.

The day did not start off too well but fortunately the rain moved away just as the people arrived.  And there were many people, mostly families with kids.  Among many other things, there were pony rides (a big hit with the kids) and Model T rides in original old cars around the streets where they used to be common place.  I had my annual hot dog, which I was going to take a picture of it to commemorate but it really was too disgusting looking.

I made 3 colours of icing yellow, orange and green, but actually the yellow icing looked a little too much like Frenches mustard and the orange was more pink (sadly very popular with the girls) even the green was a little contentious as many people called it blue.

Icing cookies and sprinkles 

But actually the icing and sprinkles were really just an excuse to pile as much sugar on to a cookie as possible.

Which they did

Any way not a great culinary day, but I really enjoyed it and I am glad to see kids can still have fun from such simple things such as decorating cookies and making wool dolls, not a gameboy in sight.