Sidewalk Days announces cancellation of 2020 festival due to pandemic
Yet another beloved event has taken the precautionary route and cancelled due to ongoing coronavirus restrictions, and this one is a tough one to swallow for Moose Jaw.
The Sidewalk Days committee announced that the 2020 summer festival will not be taking place this July, due to the pandemic restrictions regarding large gatherings and the uncertainty of when such measures would be lifted. “We tried to hold out,” said committee member Jacki L’Heureux-Mason. “[But] we were getting so many phone calls and I think the writing was just on the wall.” Sidewalk Days attracts about 20,000 visitors over the weekend, but government officials remain unable to say whether a gathering of that size will be possible by July. “We would have loved to have been able to put this on for everybody, but it just feels like it’s a letdown for us and we feel like we’re letting everybody down,” said L’Heureux-Mason.
Committee organizers felt that postponing Sidewalk Days would only cause uncertainty for vendors and performers, especially financially, and decided to cancel the event.
“We didn’t really have much of a decision; we are going to be held to legislation,” said L’Heureux-Mason. “[And] we have some responsible decisions to make when it comes to giving some deposits back and keeping the festival financially responsible.”
Vendors who have already registered for Sidewalk Days 2020 will be given the option of requesting a refund on their fees or placing a hold on them to save their spot for 2021, by contacting the committee at info@sidewalkdays.ca.
The organizers working on Moose Jaw’s Canada Day celebrations are continuing to plan for the holiday, as that event is smaller and more flexible. L’Heureux-Mason is sure that the committee will be able to put together something for Canada Day even if the gathering restrictions are still in place at that time.
Sidewalk Days will return in 2021, said L’Heureux-Mason, and will potentially be able to feature some new ideas from the committee that just missed the deadline to be a part of this year’s festival.
“This does give us a little bit extra time to access some ideas that we’ve thought of, that were too late for this year, and hopefully a couple of little surprises that we’ll be able to bring up for next year,” said L’Heureux-Mason. Support for the announcement continues to be largely positive, and L’Heureux-Mason is grateful to see that Moose Jaw understands the difficult choice. “People know that we’re not the first to make that decision,” said L’Heureux-Mason. “There’s a lot bigger events than us that have cancelled [and] we don’t know, the future is so uncertain with how things are going to roll out that it seems like the right decision to give people that heads up at this point and make that decision.”