CENTRE WELLINGTON – Elora Festival is cancelled. Fergus Scottish Festival is cancelled. Riverfest Elora is to be announced but seems unlikely to go forward. A fruitful summer of festivals with lots of spending in Centre Wellington is another victim of the pandemic.
That’s not counting the impact on the local culture.
David Radley, Fergus Scottish Festival president, said he is disappointed the festival’s 75th anniversary celebration is postponed until 2021.
“When it first started, of course we were very optimistic that this whole thing would run its course,” Radley said, referring to the early days of the pandemic.
Radley explained this period is when the acts, guests, athletes and others involved in the festival begin to be booked and get their airline tickets. When the situation looked worse, a hard decision had to be made.
“So everybody was getting in touch with us saying ‘what’s going on?’” Raldey said. “It was just at that time at the cusp where we weren’t sure what to do, so it was very difficult at the time.”
According to Radley, the Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games are known worldwide and bring in around 22,000 visitors. He couldn’t provide a precise number but knew the overall economic impact of the festival is in the multimillion-dollar range.
“It’s a big disruption obviously, the local businesses thrive through that time period,” Radley said, noting that the bars and pubs do particularly well. “Downtown we always put music in all the pubs and we have a downtown parade.”
There’s more disappointment in Elora for Peter Barr, Elora Festival board president. Barr said this year’s Elora Festival had an incredible lineup planned that mixed contemporary artists with the Elora Singers.
“We’re trying to find ways to work them into our winter season or next year’s festival,” Barr said. “The biggest disappointment is that the program that in my mind was absolutely brilliant, is not going to come together the way we wanted it to.”
Barr, as a partner at consulting firm Deloitte Canada, explained that economic impact is measured in three ways: direct, indirect and induced.
The direct impact from the festival is the actual spend from an organization for example employment. Elora Festival would hire summer students, production assistants, stage hands and the singers themselves.
This means any out-of-town residents would not be staying at hotels or spending money in Elora during the multi-week festival, which is the indirect impact.
“We’re not going to be bringing the same people to town that we normally do for the month of July,” Barr said.
The induced impact is how people stay healthily employed at these businesses that serve those who work or visit the festival.
It can be difficult to measure the precise indirect or induced impact but Barr said the festival’s direct spend can be up to $700,000. He estimated the overall impact is well over a million dollars.
Both men said the cultural loss from festival cancellations are huge.
Radley said there are two typical types of Scottish Festival attendees, those who are looking for a new experience and the Scottish devotees.
“The Scottish were pretty much the ones who pioneered this part of Canada,” Radley said. “It’s a significant impact not only locally but to the Scottish diaspora in Canada.”
According to Barr, the Elora Festival has loyal attendees from as far as the northern states in the US.
“It’s an experiential based event because, not only are we doing more experiential art with our new artistic director, but you’re coming to experience this little community, the beautiful gorge and all the things that go with it,” Barr said.
Barr said he is cautiously optimistic that social distancing protocols will ease in time to get the choir together in the summer to create digital art and to have performances in the winter.
“That’s where it gets more fuzzy,” Barr said. “When can we have a big public event again and will that happen in the fall or later, I don’t know.”
Radley said the best way to keep people interested is to engage them with content on their website and Facebook page. He said when they can finally have their anniversary celebration, it will be a must-attend event.
“Watch this space for 2021 because we expect with the extra time we can come back and have a very meaningful 75th anniversary,” Radley said.
