A festival that’s been running for more than 30 years is in danger of ending after city hall renews a policy to “minimize disruptions” to Victoria Park.
The policy prevents amusement park-style electric rides in the park, which London Children’s Festival organizer Doug Hillier says would kill any future festivals.
“This would be the last one, I’m sorry,” Hillier said on The Morning Show with Devon Peacock. “I’m an entrepreneur and I can’t keep ruining my retirement, just because I love the event. All my family are saying ‘You’ve got to pull the plug. If this happens, you have to cancel it,’ and that’s heartbreaking to me.”
Hillier says the decision comes after the festival was already granted permission to put rides on the green space twice. However, director of parks and forestry for the city Paul Yeoman says that was a temporary exception.
“In 2022 and 2023 the City allowed a temporary exemption to the Special Events Policy and allowed rides on the park’s green space while re-routing Queens Avenue traffic to Dufferin, making it difficult to close the street,” Yeoman said in a statement.
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“Now that construction in the area is complete, the city has shared with all festival organizers planning events this summer, that electric rides are once again able to be set up on the two nearby streets.”
The statement continues that the policy is to limit damage to the park and has been set out in the city’s special events policy for “many years.”
The Children’s Festival has operated at Victoria Park since 2007. Before that, it operated indoors at the Western Fair.
Hillier questions the idea that the event damages the park, and says the rides aren’t “heavy-duty” enough to cause any damage to the park’s turf.
“We have spread out these rides. This isn’t a Ferris wheel, these are lighter rides that that don’t impact the ground. We’ve taken pictures before and after, I’m sure they have too. But they have nothing to even show me that there’s any damage, there’s none.”
The rides are the festival’s biggest source of revenue, according to Hillier, and without them, the festival will most likely come to an end.
“At one point it was around $100,000 in the park that was two years ago. Then it went down to about $80,000, so we get a percentage of that,” Hillier said. “Not a lot but enough to that we don’t have to keep funding this or taking money from other festivals so that we can keep it at one festival on its own merits.”
Hillier’s company, Family Shows Canada, also operates Ribfest and the London International Food and Drink Festival.
He adds that while this year’s festival will go on no matter what, if City Hall doesn’t change its mind, this will be the last year.
“I don’t agree with what the parks administration is saying that they are going to be so firm as to enforce this rule after they allowed this to happen for the last two years. I don’t understand. What did we do wrong? Nothing.”
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