Editor:
It was with great dismay that I read the headline last week announcing the cancellation of the Ski Track on Main Street event for this coming winter, although I was somewhat heartened by your editorial on the same topic.
I must admit I have a particular fondness for this event, probably because I was the event manager for the first three years of this wonderful community celebration. Together with an awesome group of individuals, community groups, businesses and government agencies, I had the privilege to help create an event that was both fun and unique and promoted an active and healthy lifestyle to locals and visitors from around the entire world. Not bad for a bunch of Canmorons.
Let me be very clear, I agree that the BRZ may do what they want with their funds and they are not obligated to fund any community events. It is also important to note that without the support of the downtown business owners, the event would never have seen the light of day in the first place.
Our community should be grateful for their past support. However, it is clear their priorities have changed, so perhaps it is time to look elsewhere for support and from my experience we wouldn’t have to look too far.
While the BRZ did take one of the lead positions, there were a large number of other event sponsors and partners – 65 to be exact in February of 2012, my last year – who all had a vested interest in this event. These partners ranged from individuals, small and large businesses, community groups with hundreds of participants, the athletes and organizing committees of Nordic Centre national and international races held in conjunction with Snow Tracks and our local and provincial government agencies (most notably the truly irreplaceable support from the Canmore Nordic Centre).
Without this extensive and diverse range of support, none of this would have been, nor ever will be, possible. So the notion that BRZ and by extension the CBT are in any way the gatekeepers of this truly broad-based community event is sheer nonsense.
As such, I find that the decision to announce the removal of the core funding at this late date is most troublesome as it almost guarantees there will not be time for the ski track to be realized this year. Given what is clearly a consensus amongst the BRZ group that the event hurt their businesses, this decision was undoubtedly made some time ago, perhaps not formally, but made nonetheless. Would it not have been more appropriate then to announce this cut a few months ago so others could perhaps give it a try?
For example, I completely agree with your editorial that the steaming pile of $458,000 in radar loot would be a good place to get the seed funding for such an undertaking and maybe other opportunities beneficial to our community (like, gee, maybe, bus shelters). I would also echo the sentiment that the BRZ and CBT do not own this event, nor for that matter do these two groups own Main Street, period.
Speaking of ownership, since when was it decided that the central theme or “brand” for a Christmas in Canmore should be shopping? Is this really the best we can do? To have some banners blowing in the wind proclaiming that in Canmore we have a shopping festival at Christmas?
My goodness, you can shop anywhere, but where else in the western hemisphere could you have had a ski track on Main Street kind of day full of kids and dogs and snow and laughter and good old fashioned fun? The kind of day and feeling, I might add, that keeps them coming back for more (one footnote; the whole trendy use of the word brand, well it always makes me think of the back end of cattle, funny thing that).
Finally, I would commend your editor for bringing to light the question of what is important to our community in this and other community matters, as this consideration seems to be getting totally lost in the headlong rush to sell our community. Yes, our business community is absolutely vital to the continued well being of this most amazing place and they deserve our full support, no doubt.
But, should we decide to set our community up as some sort of outlet mall but with dogs and trees, well, I think we will lose far more than we will gain.
Anyways, enough of the shopping theme, it is almost Christmas, so here’s a list of some of what makes Christmas in Canmore important to me: shinny under the lights on the pond; the Festival of Trees; numerous craft and bake sales with really good stuff made by locals; dogs with antlers and Santa outfits; Skate with Santa on the Pond; Christmas choir concerts sung by locals; community dinners at our local churches; tons of lights everywhere with our downtown virtually aglow; parties with friends and co-workers; Santas Anonymous and food bank drives to help those in need; people taking the time to slow it down a little bit, yes, even in the self check-out line; the sharing of a moment or two on the street, in a store or at a local cafe or restaurant; our children, now grown, coming home from faraway places and a compelling sense of history and belonging to one another based not on what you bought today, but on shared life experiences and a collective sense of caring for one another.
You just can’t buy or sell that, now can you?
Merry Christmas to all.
Ric Proctor, Canmore
