LET THERE BE LIGHT
Enchanted Forest marks 20th year
“When you start a project, it kind of is part of you,” Rick Steffen said, surveying the final few touch-ups being done to the last of the 66 light displays that illuminate the Enchanted Forest at the Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park and Zoo.
“Kids are coming when they’re three or four and they see this, they didn’t even know that there was no Enchanted Forest at one time,” he said. “They’ve grown up with it all their life.”
On the Thursday night before the Enchanted Forest opened for its 20th anniversary season — its “awesomeversary,” as it’s being called — there was a excitement in the air. Even after two decades of making the forest a reality, the people who are new and the people who have been with it the longest were all eager for the ceremonial switch to be flipped to power on the lights throughout the forest.
But Steffen knows what it’s like to not have the show. He’s one of the handful who have been with the project since its inception.
Steffen was long involved with the Festival of Trees in Saskatoon, and he and former City Hospital Foundation CEO Randy Kershaw started talking about putting together a much larger light show — one that could be driven through, so weather wouldn’t prevent people from coming out — but couldn’t figure out a good place to do it.
Cue Barry Meissner and the Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park and Zoo, which wanted to be part of the project.
“I always joked, ‘They had the money, we had the trees,’ ” Meissner, the former manager of the Forestry Farm, said with a chuckle. “I’m proud. It was a lot of people’s efforts.”
An Edmonton-based company presented the organizers with a plan for making lights, and some examples of how the displays would look. Kershaw said he remembers setting up the drummers from the 12 Days of Christmas display in a dark boardroom ahead of the first Enchanted Forest to show the media and potential sponsors what they were trying to do.
“I would turn on one of these things so people could see the animation of the soldier,” he said. “People said, ‘I want to be involved with this ... it’s new, it’s different.’ “
They determined it would cost about $750,000 in 1998 (or just under $1.1 million today with inflation) to buy the displays and get the required electrical system upgrades to support all the lights. But with a sizable bank loan and an outpouring of support from the community, the Enchanted Forest came to life — and caused, according to Kershaw, one of the biggest traffic jams in Saskatoon’s history.
The event has grown immensely since that first year — and the traffic flow has been smoothed out. According to numbers released by the Enchanted Forest media team, the event has received 1.4 million visitors and has raised $2.5 million in its operational lifetime for the Saskatoon Zoo Foundation and the City Hospital Foundation.
“There really is nothing like it ... it is truly one of a kind, and there’s something for everybody,”
zoo foundation executive director Dawn Woroniuk said.
Rick Steffen has long since taken over making the new light displays himself, noting that they have had “over one million” lights in the entire forest at this point.
The first light display Steffen built was the Noah’s Ark display — more than 160 feet long, with about 36,000 lights and 3,000 feet of rope lights, it’s easily the largest display in the forest. And the new display this year is the classic Charlie Brown’s Christmas, told in a handful of bright scenes.
Steffen, who wasn’t able to be there for the grand “switch-flipping” ceremony on Thursday, said people have asked him if he ever plans on stopping making the lights and running the Enchanted Forest. But he said it’s just as fun now as it was during Year 1, and seeing all the families — including his own — come out to enjoy the lights made it all worthwhile.
“All the lights come alive,” Steffen said. “How could you ever stop something like this?”