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The 37th annual Saskatoon Festival of Trees wrapped up on the weekend at the Western Development Museum after record attendance numbers.
“It was wild,” said Raylene Kershaw, the operations manager for the Saskatoon Festival of Trees.
Kershaw said last year, the festival had around 17,000 admissions. Although organizers don’t know the specific number of admissions yet for this year, she predicts admissions were well past 20,000.
“What we would normally see on a daily attendance was happening in three hours,” she said.
(Raylene Kershaw/Submitted)
The festival had more than 90 displays of trees and also featured decorated displays such as gingerbread houses. It also included a wide array of activities like face-painting, photos with Santa, and Frozen Friday with popular characters like Elsa, Anna and Olaf.
Additionally, Kershaw said the festival sold more than 30,000 gingerbread cookies.
“I think people were ready to come and enjoy experiences like the festival again,” Kershaw said.
Due to the high volume of visitors and the bitter cold, Kershaw said organizers had to encourage individuals to wait in their cars before coming into the event.
The non-profit organization donates the proceeds to the Saskatoon City Hospital Foundation. This year, the funds went towards the “Equip for Excellence” campaign, which provides equipment, resources and technology for the hospital.
“Every dollar that we clear we donate back into the community,” Kershaw said, noting the festival would not be possible without volunteers and sponsors. “It was an incredible team working together.”
Kershaw said the last two years have been tight. The festival did an online sale in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and started to return in person last year.
“To have these kinds of (admission) numbers again was incredible,” she said.
According to the Festival of Trees website, $1,741,163 has been donated to the Saskatoon City Hospital Foundation since the festival became a non-profit in 2006.
