The summer carnivals at the Port Elgin beach have been cancelled for this year.
Town of Saugeen Shores’ Acting Director of Community Services Jayne Jagelewski says they’ve decided to table the carnivals for this year due to a lack of interest in running them.
She says there were only two not-for-profit groups interested in hosting the fundraising carnivals this summer.
Jagelewski says last year, they saw the number of carnivals held in the summer months drop from the average of 56 to only 10.
She says the were asked by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission to change the types of games offered for children to only “games of skill,” and then only adults were allowed to play the “games of chance.”
Due to that, Jagelewski says they lost a lot of interest from groups because there was a misconception that the carnivals would take more volunteers and effort to run.
In turn, the scheduling became less consistent, and she says that people could no longer expect carnivals on the same night every week.
She says no matter how much they tried to promote the carnival dates, it wouldn’t draw the same numbers.
Jagelewski says this could hurt tourism because many families would plan their vacations and cottage rentals around the carnival dates.
She says the idea of bringing the carnivals back will be discussed during the creation of the waterfront master plan, which will be a two-year process.
