The plan right now is for Billy Barker Days in Quesnel to go ahead this year, although it will likely be a scaled down version, and it may take place later in the year.
Janice Mclean, the President of the Billy Barker Days Society, says their number one concern right now is the health of everyone and she says they won’t do anything to risk that.
But Mclean says they haven’t given up on hosting a festival this year…
“It’s possible that if we can’t do in on those dates that we will use different dates. It will be different though, we won’t necessarily have the full four days and won’t necessarily have all of the events if we have to do that.”
Mclean says they won’t have the funding to do everything that they normally do…
“One really important consideration for us is the business community in Quesnel has been extraordinarily generous to us in the past, and that is where the bulk of our financing comes from for the festival. This year unfortunately everybody is in a tough financial position because of the virus, and we don’t feel comfortable going back to those same people and asking them for more money, so we will have to scale back to some degree.”
We asked Mclean if there was a date when a decision would have to made…
“It depends how flexible we’re prepared to be. If we want to do something in the park obviously it has to be before the snow comes again, but we’re trying to stay totally open to having something for the community that they can come out and enjoy and relax a bit when this is over. So whether that’s in July or August or September or December, we’re going to stay open to it, we’d like to give this to the community, the community deserves it, they’ve been great.”
This year’s Billy Barker Days festival is tentatively slated for July 16th through the 19th.