Club Loreley…
…proves, that German style carnival –
or Mardi Gras – is not quite dead yet!
 As
of now Oshawa seems to be the "Hochburg" of Mardi Gras in
Ontario. Hamilton’s GKG Narrhalla ’58 is still in the running
even though they had to cancel their event due to really bad
weather, but they showed up and attended the recent function at
the Loreley Club.
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| Hamilton's GKG
Narrhalla '58 |
 Kitchener’s
Narrenzunft provided the required royalty with Princess Mona and
her Lady in Waiting (Hofdame) for this colourful evening.
Unfortunately most of the "Karneval" societies are now defunct.
Mainly since there are no longer enough
 eligible
members – and their offspring have not been ‘educated and
trained’ sufficiently, or lost interest in the beginning because
the carnival hierarchy insisted on everything being done in
German, a language they only had very little familiarity with.
They
 were
born here and considered themselves Canadians.
I have talked to many of the dance guard members who told me
that they used to bring their boyfriends with them, who were so
bored because they did not really know what was going on. So
they never accompanied the girls again and stayed away in
droves. And they did not show any interest anymore after most of
the societies switched to English.
 But
Oshawa’s Loreley Club is still wonderfully alive – mainly due to
the efforts of the Henninger clan, who supported carnival – and
the club - for many, many years with much enthusiasm and hard
work.
The club still has almost 50 well-trained Garde Girl Dancers, in
the categories of Seniors, Juniors and Kinder! They all were in
evidence that evening and performed admirably well– including
the by now famous ‘Can Can’ – for the grateful guests and club
members.
The Senior Guard Dancers also assured
me that they have recovered from the disappointment when the
last Mardi Gras event at the Narrhalla ’58 in Hamilton was
cancelled due to inclement weather. They were notified only 15
minutes before they were ready to drive to Hamilton. Since they
had all been assembled and ready to do something, they all went
out to dinner – and they didn’t even have to dance for it!
 Wonderful
innovative and colourful costumes were in evidence and Otto
Heller and the judges had a hard time finding the winners in the
different categories.
 The
rich palette of familiar music by Peter Neudorf and the Euro
Connection, kept the dance floor continuously occupied and I
recognized one of the musicians, Bernie Schmieder, which has
been playing his marvellous trumpet for about 40 years already
at many, many gigs. Now there is an ‘Old-timer’!
The dancers started at about 6 years
old – there were quite a number of them - and I am not saying
how old some of the others were.
Most of the members of the club itself are retired and will not
be affected by the closing of the GM plant that looms over this
lively community, I was informed, but many of them have
relatives and neighbours who might be in dire straits, if it
does.
 We
would also thank the club for the warm reception ECHO GERMANICA
received. The club and the members were very impressed that we
had taken the time to come out in bad weather to cover their
event. But this is something that we do for our community and
have done since the paper was started way back when! We like to
do what we can to keep out traditions alive, but we can only do
it when the community participates and helps us too. It is
something we need to do together!
 Kudos
to Loreley then for fighting the trend of declining memberships
and interests and still maintaining leadership in their
community and pride in their heritage – something that has been
lacking in some of the others!
As always, Alaaf and Helau
Dick Altermann
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