Edmonton’s longest-running winter festival runs for 10 days starting Friday at a new location.
Silver Skate Festival celebrates winter sport, recreation, arts and culture in Sir Wilfrid Laurier Park at 13221 Buena Vista Road from Feb. 9 – 19. The festival started in 1990.
“Thirty-four years of creating winter memories,” said executive producer Erin DiLoreto.
“We’re all about community. We’re about celebrating and sharing winter stories. There’s nothing better than seeing multi-generational families, we see a lot of newcomers. It’s incredible. They are ready to come out and embrace winter.”
The event offers skating, disc golf, figure skating demonstrations, lantern making, a snow garden, family fun zone, a snow sculpture display, a night fire sculpture burn and roving artists on the folk trail.
“We’ve got three brand new stories in our folk trail, which are allegorical tales with some social justice meaning,” DiLoreto explained. “We’re very fortunate to have three new stories: the Twin, the Wind and Sleep and the Generator.”
The festival also has an Indigenous pavilion in the Heritage Village with installations, stories and a Winter Walking Ceremony. Attendees can also take part in the Ice Duathlon or Mammoet Winter Triathlon.
“Did we talk about the International Festival of Winter Cinema and the snow screen? That crew has put together a catalogue of films that is inspiring,” DiLoreto said. “The breadth and scope of the programing there is just amazing.”
Click here for a full list of Silver Skate Festival events.
This year presented different challenges — and opportunities — for the festival organizers, with the new venue and the economy.
“We have pared down a little this year with the new location,” DiLoreto said. “Like everyone else, we’ve seen some funding cuts, so we’ve pared down a bit.
“And learning a new site. I spent 18 years in Hawrelak. There’s a lot of muscle memory there. We’re really excited to showcase and celebrate another incredible park in our river valley that doesn’t really get the accolades it deserves.
“We had to navigate making snow in a new site that we thought was going to be really easy and it turned out to be quite a challenge with heated cisterns and water trucks and water pumps, but we got our snow made,” she said.