FILE - A miniature chuckwagon race can be seen in this photo taken Sept. 3, 2011. The races featuring ponies was huge hit again this year at the IPE. Attendance was the best is years with 158,238 people passed through the turnstiles.
Image Credit: Flickr/rainnchaser
September 07, 2015 - 2:30 PM
“ONE OF THE BEST FAIRS EVER”
ARMSTRONG – Attendance at the Interior Provincial Exhibition, which wrapped up yesterday in Armstrong, was the highest it’s been in years.
IPE general manager Bryan Burns says over the five days of the fair a total of 158,238 people passed through the turnstiles, including 38,673 on the last day of the fair Sunday, Sept. 6. That’s over 10,000 more in total attendance than last year and 8,000 more that 2013.
“I think it was one of the best fairs ever,” Burns says. “We had perfect fair weather.”
He says other than some rain Wednesday night and Thursday, it was sunny with temperatures around 22 Celsius.
“People didn’t want to go to the beach for their last long weekend of the summer,” Burns says.
The folks at Uncle Buck's go through tens of thousands of mini-donuts during fair time.
(CHARLOTTE HELSTON / iNFOnews.ca)
For any outdoor event the key is weather, he says. If you don’t have good weather, you lose the last minute people who look out the window to see what the weather is like before deciding to go to the fair.
As for the finances, Burns won’t know for another month if they ended up in the black or the red, but points out the high attendance will definitely help.
One of the hits this year were the Miniature Chuckwagon races put on by an association from Alberta with ponies pulling a smaller version of a chuckwagon.
“The rodeo grounds were full for them. (Sunday’s) finals were jam-packed. It’s just such a great form of entertainment,” he says. Even the RCMP come out with a radar gun to record how fast the wagons get going.
Burns says they are already working on ways to make the IPE better in 2016.
(CHARLOTTE HELSTON / iNFOnews.ca)
To contact the reporter for this story, email Howard Alexander at halexander@infonews.ca. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2015