CALEB NICKERSON
MANSFIELD ET PONTEFRACT Dec. 5, 2020
The Chutes Coulonge Park kicked off their annual lighted trail walk on Saturday evening, and even with some adjustments due to public health guidelines, the event was a resounding success.
Director General André Piché said that they had changed the name and cut down on some activities in order to conform with the rules around gatherings.
“Instead of calling it the festival of lights, we modified the formula a wee bit and it’s just called ‘Light up the Night’, a nocturnal lighted walk,” he said. “It’s similar in walking around the site with it being lit up, with the music we can hear in the background and all that. The only difference is . . .
we cut out the food section to limit the amount of time that people are staying on site, and obviously adapted with all the COVID rules … to be masked up and keep people out of our buildings as much as possible.”
The park will be open every Saturday and Sunday in December from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and Piché said that he’d cut a deal for the big man in red to show up from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. each night. He added that there was a possibility of extending the show into the new year if attendance was steady.
“If we see there’s more interest, we could potentially open up some more nights after that,” he said. “We’re starting with that … instead of doing it just on Saturday nights like we did in previous years, we decided to stretch it out, maybe limit the number [each] night.”
Piché said that setting up the light show took two or three people about a week and a half, which included troubleshooting all the electrical issues.
Despite the extra precautions due to COVID-19, he said that the park had a successful summer season, which they were lucky enough to extend by a few weeks.
“Even the fall ended up being good with all that hot weather we had at the end, I extended it two weekends,” he said. “The park wasn’t full, but there was a lot of people interested in coming on the lines. So I can’t really complain at all about the season, and I think with this evening walk that we’re having, I think it’s going to pull people out of their houses and maybe let people breathe some fresh air here in the Pontiac and enjoy it.”
