Extraordinary weather and three big concerts helped contribute to what may have been a record breaking fair at Westerner Park this year.
With daytime highs hovering around the mid-20s through the week, the Westerner Days fair broke it’s daytime attendance record on Wednesday and came within 400 admissions of breaking another day record on Friday, said marketing and sponsorship manager Erin Gobolos.
So many people poured into the gate Friday evening, the Westerner came perilously close to running out of parking, despite having 580 new spaces available this year.
About 100 vehicles had to be parked in the racetrack infield, made available after the pony chuckwagon races had wrapped up for the day, said Gobolos.
The Friday record from 2008 was threatened, but still stands at 24,729 people, including thousands of fans who had come that year to see Sawyer Brown on the Main Stage.
Total attendance for this year’s fair had reached 79,816 people by the time the gates closed on Saturday night.
“If we get 11,000 people today, we will have broken our all-time attendance (for all five days),” Gobolos said on Sunday afternoon. Final figures would not be available until sometime today.
Along with the boost from Mother Nature, the evening concerts on the Main Stage proved to be a big draw, she said.
Mariana’s Trench was huge, while Trooper pulled in more people than fair organizers had anticipated. Johnny Reid also did very well, but the Dance Party, with a deejay playing the music, wasn’t as successful as had been hoped, she said.
The Mariana’s Trench concert also suffered harsh criticism from a Blackfalds family who brought their two toddlers with them.
John Jenkins said in an e-mail to Gobolos and copied to the Advocate that while their children love to hear Mariana’s Trench on the radio, the group’s stage performance was too vulgar for a family show.
Gobolos said that while every comment is taken to heart, that particular show, which started at 8:30 p.m., was not geared to young children, but to teens and young adults who thrive on that form of entertainment.
Changes made on the grounds have enabled the Westerner to provide a new family fun area with children’s shows and activities set for earlier in the day, she said.
Red Deer resident Wendy Price said she had come to the fair to enjoy a day with her three-year-old granddaughter, Avayah. Catching some shade while her daughter took the little girl inside to play in the sandbox, Price said was pleased with the expanded package for children.
Avayah found a favourite ride and didn’t want to go on any of the others, so when she got tired, Price was left with 12 tickets. She handed them to people waiting line.
Further south, in the big peoples’ rides, teenagers Dustin Blades and Alex Hartman were waiting for their seventh and sixth rides, respectively, on the Twin Flip. That’s the main reason they went to the fair, along with the chance to meet up with teenaged girls, said Hartman.
Once area that’s still a work in progress is the new Artistic Expressions gallery and stage, set up to replace the former Creative Arts displays.
People had said they wanted more art and they wanted more interaction, said Gobolos.
It was a shuffling step in the right direction, said Western Light artist Brent Heighton, a former anthropology professor who gave educational talks to the handfuls of people inclined to listen.
Fresh — and exhausted — from the Calgary Stampede, Heighton said he was disappointed that so few people took time to take part in the show, which tends to pack them in tight in Calgary. A fellow artist had sold out on the first day in Calgary, said Heighton.
He suggested that the Westerner Park staff need to work more closely with the artists involved in what he says can develop into yet another big draw for Westerner Days.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com
