Winter Festival kicking off without opening ceremony

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This article was published 28/01/2016 (3729 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon’s 13th annual Winter Festival kicks off today, but the newly revamped cultural celebration will be doing so without a formal opening ceremony.

“The lieutenant-governor is not coming and it’s a transition year, so we decided that we wouldn’t have an official opening ceremony this year,” event chair Richard Bruce said.

Formerly known as the Lieutenant-Governor’s Winter Festival, the organization parted ways with its title sponsor this year and became an independent, incorporated not-for-profit organization.

Bruce says the changes have made for an “interesting” preamble to the event.

“You have to go slow before you can go fast and there’s going to be things that happen that you weren’t expecting,” he said. “We need to wait until we run through the weekend, then we get to (assess).”

While visitors won’t be able to take free city buses to this year’s eight pavilions, Handi-Transit will still be providing free rides.

Bruce says more than 30,000 people took in the festival last year and he’s curious how the weekend’s mild forecast will affect attendance.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen plus temperatures at this time of the year — if you have to stand outside it’s not unpleasant, but we’ve had people stand out in minus 40 before,” he said.

Participants with the pavilions — Brazilian, Chinese, English, Irish, Mauritius, Métis, Scottish and Ukrainian — have been busy preparing food and rehearsing performances in the week leading up the festival, which runs until Saturday.

“We peeled all our vegetables for the stew (Tuesday), we had about 20 volunteers come and do that,” said Marlene Campbell, secretary for the Irish Society of Western Manitoba.

Volunteer cooks with the Irish pavilion will turn the prepped potatoes, carrots, celery and onions into 260 litres of stew, which will be served alongside 130 dozen scones, 30 dozen loaves of soda bread and 80 dozen shortbread cookies — among other treats.

“It’s a lot of food and we don’t usually have much left over at all,” Campbell said with a laugh.

On Wednesday night, participants with the Mauritius pavilion had their final dress rehearsal and put the finishing decorations on their space at the Central United Church.

Previously, Mauritius was part of the Global Village pavilion. Organizer Kerselin Fumier is looking forward to letting his culture shine this year.

“We are looking for a big crowd because we know people like Mauritius … this year we are doing everything traditional from back home,” Fumier said, adding that everything from the music to the dancing to the spicy food will be representative of island country.

Fumier, president of the Mauritius Cultural Association of Brandon Inc. says he is aware of more than 200 people who have emigrated from Mauritius to Brandon.

On average, the Winter Festival sees more than 1,000 volunteers help out over the weekend. This year, the Métis pavilion still needs more hands on deck.

“I don’t have any ushers at all, so I’m looking for probably anywhere from six to 10 volunteers yet,” pavilion co-ordinator Steven DeMontigny said, adding that he also needs people to serve food and take tickets.

Métis pavilion organizers have cut down their schedule this year and will be open on Friday night and all day Saturday.

To sign up to volunteer and view a full schedule of events, visit lgwf.ca.

» ewasney@brandonsun.com

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