For the first time in more than a decade, Fort George Park won't be reverberating with music later this month for B.C. Rivers Day.
The annual music festival held every September to honour the region's connection to local waterways has been put on hold for at least a year as organizers search for more volunteers and new ideas about how to make the event relevant to the community.
"It's unfortunate," volunteer organizer Terry Robert said. "But it doesn't mean there's never going to be another Rivers Day."
The call went out at last year's festival for more volunteers to come aboard the planning committee. Robert said there was some positive response but not enough people stepped forward to make this year's event a go. He said the organizing committee has relied on a great group of volunteers in the past, but they've become stretched too thin in recent years.
Robert said raising enough revenue to cover the hard costs of the festival was never a problem in the past, thanks to corporate and community support, but without the volunteer manpower to run it, the event simply wasn't possible this year.
Attendance at Rivers Day events has declined in recent years and the committee is looking for people with fresh ideas to help rejuvenate the format or even redesign it completely.
"It needs to be more relevant to more people," Robert said.
Anyone interested in getting involved with future Rivers Day events can call Robert at 250-552-2389. Volunteers will be expected to attend five or six planning meetings a year, plus be able to contribute more hours in the months leading up to the event.
"I'm confident Rivers Day will stay as a celebration of the importance [of rivers]," Robert said. "It just might not always look like it has in the past."
