SCHREIBER – Schreiber kicked off its annual winter carnival on Thursday to a gathered crowd of over 100 residents.
Beth-Ann McKay, the township's recreation programmer, said that the organizing team was feeling pretty good to see their hard work come to fruition.
“Right now, I'm just covering a maternity leave for another great organizer that does all the event planning,” she said. “I've had a lot of patience with people helping me, showing me traditions, talking about things and seeing it all come together starting today was pretty fun and felt really good.”
Thursday was filled with activities around town, including floor curling and a pasta luncheon at Holy Angels Catholic School, before the opening ceremonies at the arena which were immediately followed by performances by local skaters and featured the crowning of the Winter Carnival Prince and Princess.
“That tradition started back in 1990 with the recreation department then, and it was a tradition that they just started to, I guess, show how they value some of their citizens,” said McKay.
“Usually, we do have a king and queen, but this year it was just kind of harder to get people to come out for that, but we are always successful in finding prince and princess and as you could see they really enjoyed it on the ice. They were quite proud, so it's just a long-time tradition and hopefully we can keep it going.”
This year the carnival is back in full form after being scaled back last year due to the ongoing pandemic and McKay was glad to see so many people from the community attend.
“Actually, that's a big conversation that we've been having is we noticed with registration and things like that is we have a lot of last-minute people, so I think at last two years trying to get people used to coming back up off the couch and not be a couch potato has been a challenge,” she said.
“But then I think, you know, having the winter Carnival return in person after COVID people started to realize that maybe it would be good to come out and see a time tradition. This is the 34th year that we've had our Winter Carnival and it's really good to see a lot of familiar faces, new faces and continued tradition.”
