When planning for the 2022 edition of Sidewalk Days began almost a year ago, there were far more questions than answers, one of the largest being if it would even take place.
After seeing late cancellations due to the pandemic the previous two years, organizers once again went to work preparing and planning for an event that might not even happen, just like 2020 and 2021.
But it all came together this week, and to say the least, it was mission accomplished.
Thousands upon thousands of patrons took part in the festival in downtown Moose Jaw this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday, enjoying absolutely beautiful weather while taking in tons of entertainment, good food and even doing a bit of shopping along the way.
It was all a most welcome sight for organizer Jackie L’Heureux-Mason and her Sidewalk Days committee, who put in many a long hour of volunteer work to make sure everything went as well as it did.
“It just gives me goosebumps,” L’Heureux-Mason said Saturday afternoon during a short break from touring the festival. “When you’ve been working on something two times and not getting off the ground, even with everything else that was going on in the world, it was just hard. You put a lot of effort into it and there’s a sense of ‘we just want everyone to see what we’ve been working on’. Then we saw the first weather reports and we were so nervous that it might not happen again, but it turned out so well.
“I think it’s a combination of our work and just bringing the community back together, that’s the part that just means so much, I love seeing things so much back to normal.”
While there’s a definite ‘build it, they will come’ vibe to the massive event -- which sees Main Street in Moose Jaw blocked off from Manitoba to Ross Street and vendors lining the sidewalk up and down both sides -- it’s still a huge amount of work to pull off. The Sidewalk Days committee was a small one this year, with L’Heureux-Mason working alongside Trish German, Everley Reid and Darlene Guy to bring everything together, joined by a small army of volunteers.
“There’s always this moment I take whenever we do this where I sit somewhere and just look down on all of it and take it all in,” L’Heureux-Mason said. “It takes us 10 to 11 months to plan it and it’s very much our baby, and Trish and Everley and Darlene and I have worked well to accommodate what we needed to do… I give huge credit to those ladies for working their butts off and doing the work of six or seven people.”
Nothing would happen without the support of the community, though, with L’Heureux-Mason staunch in her belief that this couldn’t happen anywhere else given the amount of sponsorship that takes place.
“We do all this on sponsorship and not a dime of funding, all these people came out and pitched in a little or pitched in a lot, it saves so much money,” she said. “This would be a $150,000 festival in any other way, but we’re able to keep it free because all these people come together, and it’s incredible.”
Things weren’t completely perfect, as L’Heureux-Mason would like to have seen more volunteers and a full slate of vendors.
“This year we pushed the envelope a bit and we got the absolute bare minimum of volunteers, so that’s something we have to start working on earlier,” L’Heureux-Mason said. “We want to keep this free, but if we have to start paying people to man everything, we won’t be able to, and that’s a huge mandate for us.
“And we lost about 25 vendors to the pandemic, so I want to fill those again,” she added. “There are probably about 15 key spots that were empty, and we’ll be looking to make sure those are filled next year.”
All in all, the whole show could only be termed a success, and after two years on the sidelines, it was a welcome return.
“You always spend the last couple of days worrying about the weather, worrying about the volunteers and worrying about everything, but in true Moose Jaw fashion many hands made light work and we’re looking forward to celebrating all this success,” she said.
