The wildfire situation has claimed yet another victim.
The 2023 Hay Days Festival, which was scheduled to take place from July 4 to 9, has been cancelled. The announcement was made on June 1 in a press release from the Rotary Club of Hay River Sunrise, which organizes and operates the festival.
The release stated that the club had been finalizing plans for the festival’s return following the cancellation of the 2022 festival due to the flooding of the area, along with the cancellation in 2020 because of Covid-19. The 2021 festival was run over a series of weeks as opposed to a five-day festival.
Tom Lakusta, president of the Rotary club, said plans for this year’s festival were quite far along.
“The evacuation put our planning back two weeks and the continuing evacuation of KFN (K’atl’odeeche First Nation) made it simply impossible to move forward for this year,” he said. “There is simply too much uncertainty and loss in our sister community, in addition to the very tight timeline for delivering a festival that would start July 4.”
Lakusta said planning for the festival began in October 2022, which involved the first major proposals being submitted. That includedf the dates for the 2023 festival and the proposed activities.
“Changing the dates and changing the activities would have been extremely difficult given the detailed approvals for the festival,” he said. “Further, we remain uncertain as to the timeline for K’atl’odeeche residents to be back and the community to be fully functioning.”
Lakusta added that there may be plans on the part of the town to have some elements of the festival move forward during the summer, but nothing has been solidified as of yet.
The Rotary Club took over operations of the festival in 2017, which features live music, workshops and cultural activities for the entire community.
The club stated that it hopes to be able to get things back up and running for 2024.
-with files from Kaicheng Xin