The BC Northern Exhibition is doubling down.
With preparations well underway for the annual fall fair, a Prince George staple event dating back more than 100 years, the organization is now adding a second event to its repertoire. In less than a month, the BCNE will launch its spring offering. Although it is new to them, it is also a long standing local tradition - the May midway.
The May midway was formerly the work of the local Elks Club and associated service club Ladies of the Royal Purple. The event was relinquished by them as they experienced the contractions faced by many of the nation's service clubs in modern times.
The midway carried on as the private enterprise of the midway company, since it was touring the region anyway, but with no anchor promoter to support the annual appearance of the carni rides, it was less than ideal.
This year, that changes. The BCNE is stepping in to boost the May midway into the Spring Carnival from May 8-10. Helping it return to former glory - and likely to surpass it - they also partnered with the upstart Northern FanCon event to kick off the new arrangement with some wow. As the thousands of pop-culture fans come and go from the festival of fantasy and fun going on inside CN Centre, they will have the midway spectacle as an added outdoor bonus.
"As an organization, we needed to grow and we needed to improve the public's perception of the fair," said Alex Huber, president of the BCNE board of directors. "We started by adding some features to the fair itself, like the Northern Taste Pavilion with Bob Blumer, and that went really well. We also brought in Ron Perlman as a special guest star, and that went really well. Beyond that, though, the BCNE wasn't really involved in a lot of other things to get our name into the public, build new relationships with the public, create a system of public interactions. If people didn't happen to be drawn into the fair, well that was it, that was our only shot at meeting people and being a relevant organization."
There was a financial incentive as well. The BCNE had been succeeding at the box office, but expenses were growing, inflation was always moving their costs upward, there is increasing competition for modern society's attention, and past accounting practices by previous boards had saddled today's board with a debt-load the new group wanted to fix as fast as possible.
"It is already something the organization is getting a handle on. We went from six major sponsors in 2013 to 42 major sponsors in 2014, and we are well on our way to better sponsor support in 2015," said BCNE general manager Amanda Chandler. "The community values its fall fair, it is one of the biggest events that Prince George does, so sponsors are well served to be a part of that. It just had to be a focus, and the board had to show a willingness to modernize."
One of those board members is Harold Giesbrecht. He saw the new generation of kids being born with a disinterest in the old style of public entertainment. "Kids don't have chores to do anymore, they don't have to help with the family business or work on the family farm, they are amused by their phone games and they don't look at things like fall fairs as the big thing they look forward to each year. That's fine, it says things about the modern world, that's all, so how are we keeping pace with the changes? It's been the same fair for a long while, so we can't get by anymore saying that times are changing. We are the ones who have to do the changing, or you'll get left behind."
"We had a lot of hurdles to jump, from past years, and we wanted a two-year turnaround," said Howie Wright, another director excited to modernize the organization. "How things look now, we will be about three-quarters of the way there if this year goes according to plan."
"This is a motivated working board," said Huber. "There is an excitement around the board table, and a willingness to make the BCNE the fall fair we need to be for the next 100 years."
Huber, Giesbrecht, Wright and Chandler considered this coming May to be the official changing of directions. Getting the organization's arms around the debt and the practical realities of modernizing the fair (adding more directors to the board, developing a social media presence, calculating cheaper ticket prices, adding new attractions, etc.) are behind-the-scenes activities, but launching the Spring Carnival is a public step forward. Now they have a spring spotlight as well as the traditional fall focus (Aug. 12-16 this year), and there may be more diversification yet to come.
Sign up
Volunteers, vendors, sponsors and other participation doorways are outlined on the BCNE website, including online forms for one-stop sign-up. For more information, contact Chandler at 250-563-4096 or amandachandlergmbcne@gmail.com.
To become a full member of the organization, the annual general meeting is held each January, and sign-up eligibility information is explained (rates and dates) at www.bcne.ca.
