The fair that brings thousands of people to Lloydminster over four days wasn’t out of reach for mother nature.
Colonial Days wrapped up this past weekend with various events and activities taking place. However, due to the weather conditions, some outdoor shows were delayed and others were fully cancelled. General Manager of the Lloydminster Exhibition Grounds Michael Sidoryk says the cold weather impacted the fair for most of the days with a storm taking place Friday night.
“Unfortunately it seems that storm blew in pretty hard. We got through the bulls and bikes show nicely and then the weather changed dramatically after that. We had to cancel Trooper, it was just unsafe for the band and unsafe for the people to be on the grandstand for that outdoor event.”
Saturday’s demolition derby was delayed an hour waiting for the rain to pass and throughout the day the clouds made themselves known. Despite the lack of sunshine people still showed up to take part in the festivities.
“Last year we had right around 40,000 visits. This year we were just about 4 or 5 per cent off. Little lower so we’re sitting at about 38,000 attendance at this year’s Colonial Days Fair, which is still a huge amount of people coming through over the four days,” says Sidoryk.
The fair also helped organizations who took advantage of the people coming into the city such as the SPCA. The animal shelter used the event to help their adult cats find a home, which six of them did over four days.
The exhibition is still waiting on the revenue numbers, but this year spent upwards of $200,000 on entertainment alone.