Discussions

Donna said "but the people putting on the events are to be commended.     the city on the other hand - could you not have cleared some snow banks in the very congested areas of the pavilions on city streets.     near the Ukrainian and the Pilipino pavilions there was barely room to drive one vehicle past parked cars, let alone walk down the street as well.     It is an event that brings people to the city and also to areas of the city they may typically not drive in. Tourism I am sure is a very big interest of the city council. How to encourage more people to visit and then you make them wish they had not come because they are worried about an accident. "

The City of Brandon completely dropped the ball with regards to snow clearing in this area. COMPLETELY!!!  
 
As for the pavilions in this area, we attended both the Philippine & Ukrainian pavilions last night. Both of them were FANTASTIC!!! On Thursday evening, we attended the Mauritian pavilion. It, too, was EXCELLENT!  
 
To the organizers of the festival, congratulations on a job well done!

AHH! said "What happened the Lieutenant-Governor's Winter Festival? Brandon's winter festival is now known as "Westman Multicultural Festival".The amount of pavilions has decreased in the last two years since changes have been made to both the Manitoba provincial and Brandon civic governments.     Did the Manitoba Conservative government or Brandon's current government cut funding to the festival and participating groups? "

As far as I understand, the City of Brandon, where the event idea was initially brought up with the current Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba in the early 2000's, has been, in the past few years, encouraging pavilion organizers to become more self-sufficient, entities within themselves, and slowly removing the City and Province budgets from liability, transportation needs and monetary start up support. This is not recent news, but it's been in the making for quite some time now.  
 
This may be the reason for the decline in the number of pavilions in the last few years. The one-time start up seed money of $1,000 per cultural group for the winter festival is not available anymore from the City of Brandon (not sure where the Province of Manitoba stands financially) and each cultural group is encouraged to form their own entity within their ethnic communities and groups with the seed money they were given. Again, this is not some new City Council idea, but has been a few years back where this change started to take place. Insurance liability is a large cost for any level of government to take on.  
 
The pavilions that have successfully survived seem to have an abundance of volunteers and run managed and organized groups that are continually dedicated in promoting their culture.  
 
It makes it a bit more difficult for the smaller organizations who may or may not have strong organized committees, reasonably priced venues/availability to host their event, and/or enough strong volunteer power within their ethnic community. It takes a lot of time, work and volunteers to pull these venues off.  
 
While I understand the City's point of view with the longer term vision of pavilions and their multi-cultural groups eventually becoming independent (due to tight budget constraints and a cost to taxpayers of the City/Province), the changes have been noticed.  
 
The multi-cultural pavilions operating this year in Brandon work very hard to provide a fantastic family friendly enjoyment, food and dance to the citizens of Brandon. A newly branded name and non-profit independent committee have now taken over the festival and are working hard to maintain the long time integrity of the much enjoyed winter festival at a cost of free admission.  
 
No affiliation with the new group, but I think we should continue to support this great event in Brandon.  
 
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of these points. This is just what I understand and my understanding with the newly branded Winter festival.

We went to the English pavillion at the Victoria Inn Friday night. The entertainment was excellent, personally I didn't eat but heard the food was good. Drink prices were very reasonable, $5 each.  
 
The thing I found interesting was the story in the BS the following day. The director of the English pavillion claimed they were at capacity all night Friday and Saturday, but there was no line up when we got there or any time I looked over the 3 hours we were there. There were also plenty of empty seats.