These are the doldrums of winter, the time of year when many people want to simply stay at home and ride out the cold.

Morinville’s Paul Smith hopes to bring people out of their hibernation mentality with a new festival, gearing up for next Saturday.

“It’s the first festival of this season,” he emphasized, announcing the Carnival du Jour de la Famille.

Aimed at families with children aged 12 and under, the inaugural event will feature festivities for people who can still brave the cold and those who can’t. Inside the Morinville Community Cultural Centre there will be a farmers’ market with more than 40 vendors for the parents while the kids can take in pony rides in the parking lot.

An indoor hockey skills festival with prizes will also take place, along with an interactive firefighters’ display, snowshoes, an igloo making contest – “it’ll be pretty awesome for kids,” Smith says – and family entertainer Will Stroet has a performance scheduled for 2 p.m.

A full schedule is not yet available but Smith does call it a ‘mini festival’, something small enough to get the ball rolling for the first time but with a larger, more profound purpose.

“It’s a small indoor/outdoor festival. This is the premiere, the first year we’re doing it. It’s part of a larger vision of the Morinville Festival Society to turn Morinville into the natural gathering place for Morinville and surrounding communities.”

The society, he continued, is planning events that fall in between the more significant dates on the calendar like New Year’s Eve and Family Day in February.

“There aren’t other major things happening in the city and surrounding area during these times. It’s kind of a natural economically depressed time for retail in general. It’s a stimulus for everybody to say, ‘Hey, let’s get out and still enjoy life in the middle of winter.’ ”

He anticipates that 250 to 600 people will attend.

Comments

NOTE: To post a comment in the new commenting system you must have an account with at least one of the following services: Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, OpenID. You may then login using your account credentials for that service. If you do not already have an account you may register a new profile with Disqus by first clicking the "Post as" button and then the link: "Don't have one? Register a new profile".

The St. Albert Gazette welcomes your opinions and comments. We do not allow personal attacks, offensive language or unsubstantiated allegations. We reserve the right to delete comments deemed inappropriate. We reserve the right to close the comments thread for stories that are deemed especially sensitive. For further information, please contact the editor or publisher.