This past weekend the annual Pilot Butte Rodeo and cabaret wrapped up after seeing large crowds thanks to outstanding weather on Saturday. Sunday saw cooler, wetter weather, but crowds were still very supportive of the event. One of the traditions the Pilot Butte rodeo does each year is the presentation of the Harold Panno Award to a deserving volunteer.

Pictured: crowds at the Pilot Butte Rodeo

“Harold Panno was a huge community member, one of our Lion’s members, one of the original founders of the Pilot Butte rodeo, and was one of those guys that just got it done,” explained rodeo volunteer George Galloway. “Harold made our world a better place, our community a better place, and we lost Harold a few years back.”

In honour of Harold’s life, the rodeo committee created an award named after him to celebrate a volunteer each year in the community. This year, Darrell Kotylak was named the Harold Panno Award recipient after his many years of volunteering his time maintaining the rodeo grounds and helping in any area he can.

“Darrell and Karen are two wonderful people. They’d give their shirts off their back even if they didn’t have one,” beamed Galloway.

Over the years Kotylak and his family have been been involved in many different community initiatives from rodeo work to ball diamond construction and baseball programming, and even finding time to volunteer at Grey Cup and curling events.

“He (Darrell) pretended that he might of had an inkling about it, just the way we went about things, but I think Karen (his wife) was taken aback and knew nothing about it. That’s kind of what we wanted to do, was a little bit of shock and awe,” Galloway said about the surprise announcement Sunday afternoon.

In addition to volunteering, Kotylak also operates Action Roofing in Regina, a family run business dedicated to installing and maintaining commercial and industrial roofing.

Listen to our full interview below: