Despite the presumed setbacks of holding events during one of the least ideal times for people to leave their homes, these festivals are valuable to their local communities and have enjoyed growing success.
“We are a winter city. We’re winter seven months a year. Why would we not embrace winter?” says Adrian Urlacher, executive director and founder of Calgary’s Big Winter Classic Festival, a five-day outdoor winter music festival that ran for many years. “People get up and go skiing at five in the morning at -30. So jumping on a patio with a beer in your hand at -5 or -10 should just be super easy.”
The first and most obvious obstacle for winter festivals is the weather. When snowfall and temperatures can change at the drop of a hat, organizers must plan for the best and the worst. Although technically in the fall, with their late November run, CUFF Docs this year took place during a week of both low temperatures and our first significant snowfall.
The CUFF team is no stranger to this, as November is usually a month when winter gears up. While they find the weather can hinder event attendance, it also serves as something of a sales motivator as people look for cozier indoor activities.
“The festival itself did really well, and a lot of people were able to make it,” says Brenda Lieberman, CUFF director and co-founder. “We were up 55 per cent and that really helped us out, because we’re a small organization and it’s tough to break even at these events. That support really helped. I guess I could say that we sold a lot more tuques.”
As with CUFF Docs, many winter festivals depend on indoor venues as stable settings where fewer elements are at play and the only obstructions are travelling and way finding between venues.
However, many festivals don’t shy away from outdoor programming and embrace the cold weather.
Chinook Blast is a prime example of this, as many of the festival’s events have historically occurred outdoors in Calgary’s Olympic Plaza.
“What does it mean to have outdoor performers who potentially might be performing in -20 degree celsius weather? Or +8 weather?” says Patti Pon, President and CEO of Calgary Arts Development and chair member of Chinook Blast. “One of the things that I always say is, the more spontaneous the programming looks, chances are, the more planning that was required to make that happen.”
Outdoor winter fests make use of an array of different infrastructure pieces to function. Fire pits, heating pylons, heated tents, backup venues, and backup plans for instruments malfunctioning in the cold; the amount of planning required is daunting. These are also all significant budget items for any event, let alone multi-day festivals.
“You’re making a venue from scratch outdoors, and the expense to that is pretty high,” says Edmonton’s Winterruption Festival producer Brent Oliver. “I can spend lots of time on it and lots of money on it, but if the weather doesn’t really sort of cooperate, what are you going to do? It’s a drag and it’s a gamble, but also, all shows — all festivals — are kind of a gamble anyway.”
Once the realities of winter weather are surmounted, the next challenge for these festivals is programming — attracting acts to central Canada in the dead of January and February is no easy feat in itself.
Travelling to Calgary and braving all of the snowy uncertainties is, understandably, more than some acts can justify doing. However, many of the winter festivals work together and coordinate to give acts multiple stops.
“We would be in touch with Big Winter Classic, with the Saskatoon Winterruption and Regina Winterruption saying, ‘hey, let’s go after some of these artists, and maybe we can give them two or three shows between our markets instead of just one,’” says Oliver.
Winter festivals are also an opportunity for acts to earn some money and play during what’s otherwise a lower-turnout period for smaller shows. Acts are seldom overbooked in the colder season.
“We end up kind of getting our pick of the litter,” says Oliver. “A lot of the times we get told, ‘yes, they’re available’ more than, ‘no, they’re not available.’”
While all festivals rise with the tide of an excellent turnout, it’s important to consider how winter festivals benefit their overall communities. Not only do the venues that host fests get valuable business from patrons, but all surrounding businesses also enjoy increased foot traffic as people travel to and fro. In Calgary’s everlasting efforts to market downtown not just as a place for working but as a social hub, winter festivals are crucial. According to Urlacher, last year Big Winter Classic saw 3,800 attendees crawl between beloved local spots such as Modern Love, The Blox, and Last Best.
“We wanted to create experiences for people,” says Urlacher. “We wanted to create big shows on small stages. We wanted to include our local community.”
Surveying the state of Calgary’s upcoming winter festivals, 2025’s cold season will see several changes. With Olympic Plaza unavailable as the Arts Commons Transformation project gets underway, Chinook Blast looks to draw Calgarians into the downtown core with programming that extends through four blocks of Stephen’s Avenue from 1 Street S.E. to 3 Street S.W.
Art installations, live performances, and markets will appear on Stephen Avenue throughout Chinook Blast’s three-week run from January 31 to February 17. With dates that overlap both the High Performance Rodeo and Block Heater, Chinook Blast also acts as a gateway to the city’s winter arts and cultural experiences, exposing people to events outside of the festival itself.
“From a Chinook Blast-specific perspective, we’re about filling in the spaces in between,” says Pon. “What I think maybe distinguishes us from other festivals is the amount of programming that occurs that we actually have nothing to do with. We don’t produce it. We don’t create it. We don’t present it. What we do is promote it.”
Chinook Blast will also feature a hub of outdoor activities around The Confluence (formerly Fort Calgary).
This year’s winter festival season will be missing a long beloved staple. In September, Big Winter Classic announced it will not be putting on a festival this year. After 10 years and continuous growth, this outcome as a bit of a shock to the community.
Urlacher, who runs the festival, took a step back to focus on his family and other endeavours. He does, however, hesitate to say Big Winter Classic won’t go on to exist in another form.
“When your heart starts burning out, and the fun starts kind of burning out, it gets weighing and then it becomes a challenge or a hurdle, as opposed to something you want to put on for the community,” says Urlacher. “I’m never gonna say we’re done, done. We’ve already been looking at other shows … the door is definitely not closed.”
Though a secondary reason for this year’s hiatus, Urlacher also cites the financial pressure of festival planning as a difficulty for Big Winter Classic. He notes that the normal expenses of a festival like equipment, venue rentals, and the costs of bringing in acts, plus the winterizing infrastructure listed earlier means the costs quickly add up. The added gamble of weather conditions that can decrease attendance, cause travel issues for acts, and even disrupt events
Winter Festivals
High Performance Rodeo
January 14 to Febuary 2
oyr.org/hprodeo
Banff Lake Louise Snow Days
January 7 to Febuary 2
banfflakelouise.com/events/snowdays
Bob-Sled
January 21 to 26
sledisland.com
Chinook Blast
January 31 to Febuary 17
chinookblast.ca
Block Heater
Febuary 14 to 15
calgaryfolkfest.com/block-heater/info
