Southport Aerospace Centre held their annual community barbecue yesterday, and there were a couple events on the agenda. The first announcement was they were giving tours of the new glow bowling facility at the Rec Plex, which will open on October 4th. CEO Peggy May says it's been interesting going to other facilities like it, and seeing how they run.

"It's been a little bit of learning for us," says May. "Visiting other bowling alleys and other glow bowling alleys to see how they do it. We're just waiting for our electronic scoring to come in, and there's a lot of painting and a lot of renovations that have happened in the space, and we're pretty excited about it. So we'll be open to the public in October and we're going to have a Grand Opening on the 4th."

"This year, we thought we'd tie in the barbecue with thanking the volunteers from the 2018 Manitoba Air Show, and we had a lot of those volunteers out tonight and we were able to present the volunteer groups with some cheques." The other announcment was the presentation of cheques to the different organizations that volunteered their time to help with the Manitoba Air Show. May says there were more than 400 volunteers, and they all helped make the event run smoothly.

"We had 12 volunteer groups that pitched in and helped in various ways, whether it was in the beer tent or at the VIP area or even at the kids games area, but a total of 400-plus volunteers, totally amazing, Portage really stepped up and showed the people of Manitoba and all our visitors that came to the airshow how it's done and they did a really good job."