the broken typewriter

For 20 years, the High on Ice Festival has been the mainstay of winter activities in Fort St. John, not only drawing people from around the region, but also attracting high-calibre international professional ice carvers who create a myriad of incredible pieces of frozen art every February.

In the face of ever-rising costs and unpredictable weather, the city’s Department of Community Services has come up with a plan to create a more fiscally sustainable winter event that meets these challenges, so that the event can continue to bring enjoyment to the community, regardless of temperatures or snow levels.

Kylah Bryde, Director of Community Services introduced her department’s plan for the re-imagined winter festival at the September 8 Committee of the Whole meeting, with Recreation Programmer Marissa Jordan, and Program and Services Manager Heidi Avanthay.

The current High on Ice Festival has several high-cost components, including hosting about eight professional ice carvers annually; procuring and delivering large ice blocks from Ontario; engaging a site contractor for setup, maintenance and tear-down. The contractors are typically on site for up to three weeks, with carvers working for around ten days.

The highest costs for this year’s festival were $76,000 for the carvers; $83,000 for staffing; $52,000 for the site contract; and $50,000 for the ice blocks.

“All city departments contribute to this event, September to February, sometimes even longer,” said Jordan. “Planning has to start early, so we have obviously already started.”

Revenues were $50,000 in sponsorship donations; $70,000 in sponsorship in-kind donations; and $25,870 in grants and programs.

To improve the long-term sustainability of the winter festival, Bryde’s department has proposed some adjustments designed to lower costs and increase efficiency, while maintaining public enjoyment and the festival’s value to the community.

“What we’re proposing is potentially reducing and reallocating some resources, planning an event that can sustain the weather perhaps a little differently, planning an event that’s sustainable for future years,” said Bryde.

The aim is to reduce the cost of the winter festival by 19 percent, reallocate those funds to provide microgrants in the community, and spread the work out to additional organizations with events throughout the month.

“We can look at offering different activities over the whole month instead of just hitting those three days and trying to do everything in three days. Winter is a long time, why not take advantage of it,” Jordan said.

Among the cost-cutting measures Bryde and her team proposed are, cutting the ice block orders in half; reducing the size of the carving team; and discontinuing high-cost activities that have low community engagement.

For example, the city usually brings in two truckloads of ice, but Bryde says they’re aiming to bring in only one truck.

“We’d really like to see increased community involvement. We’d like to potentially spread out over the month of February for more citizens to enjoy, rather just focussing on those couple of days. And we’d like to entice regional communities and maybe some other visitors to come to Fort St. John,” Bryde said.

Adapting the planned activities to ones that are more flexible in the face of unpredictable weather, and prioritizing ones that are weather resilient and broadly appealing to the community was one of the ways staff hopes to adapt the winter festival for the long-term.

For example, when it’s really cold, as it was this year, people are less likely to turn out, but if temperatures are too warm, the sculptures and slides melt, leading to a disappointing experience for attendees.

The Ice Slides are the most popular feature of the winter festival, with over 21,000 people sliding down them at this year’s festival, even though it was very cold.

As weather plays such a key role in the success of the winter festival, Jordan said the city is fortunate to have acquired a snow machine through generous sponsorship, so preserving the snow hill that the ice slides are built on, is much easier to preserve and protect than the ice sculptures which are prone to melting.

One of the features proposed for the 2026 event, in conjunction with reducing the amount of ice brought in, would be to create a 360-degree slide hill.

“What this would look like is instead of, as we plan to maybe cut back on ice, we would use a portion of the hill for ice slides and then we would use a portion of the hill for perhaps a bit of a half-pipe or something a little more unique there – not snowboarding – and just more of a traditional sledding hill,” Jordan explained.

“Diversifying that hill that uses less ice but still delivers a fun experience for kids.”

In recent years, the city pivoted away from having the ice carving take place on the Family Day weekend, opting instead to have that done during the week and ready by week’s end. Jordan says they’re looking at going back to ice carving taking place during the weekend.

By reallocating some of the funds to microgrants, staff anticipates being able to offer a wider variety of activities, throughout the city during February. It would work in the same way as the microgrants for Canada Day when the fireworks are cancelled, assisting local businesses, groups and individuals to create a fun event, like snow golf for example. They have also reached out to organizations such as Crystal Cup to see if they’d like to make their event part of the winter festival.

Staff also wants to steer away from having tents in Centennial Park, instead focus on using Festival Plaza.

As part of revamping the winter festival and stretching various activities out throughout the entire month of February, Bryde suggests rebranding the event’s name from High on Ice Winter Festival to simply Winter Fest.

Mayor and Council were excited about the proposed changes.

Councillor Byron Stewart said that he was around twenty years ago when the High on Ice Festival started “It is about time to change, I’m glad ice is no longer a part of the name. Winter Fest is good.”

He also felt that more of an emphasis families and on family events, even getting the School District 60 band involved would be a good idea.

However, although Stewart says Festival Plaza is a “fabulous building”, he doesn’t want to see it become the focus of winter activities.

“I personally don’t need Festival Plaza being the centre of attention, I’d rather just see hundreds of families out and about within all of our parks, if that’s possible.”

Stewart and Councillor Sarah MacDougall both liked the idea of spreading the festival out throughout February.

“I like the idea of encouraging more community involvement and put on events with the microgrants,” said MacDougall. “I love the slide hill idea. Those ice slides sure are well-loved, the thought that we could have sledding and other ideas is great.”

Councillor Trevor Bolin agreed that marketing Winter Fest to neighbouring communities is a good idea, if the festival is to be successful, they want to draw people in from throughout the region.

He also agreed with Stewart that dropping the name High on Ice is a good move, noting that the name has been one of the biggest complaints he’s heard about the event.

“Slides for a decade and a half have been the draw, so I think it’s fantastic that you’re focussing on that,” said Bolin. “I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the changes that are going to come forward from this, and I’m excited to see it in February.”

Mayor Lilia Hansen appreciated staff’s efforts to keep the winter festival financial sustainable.

“We love things to grow but we don’t want to see the costs ballooning beyond what we can afford,” she said.

Hansen is looking forward to seeing how many more businesses choose to get involved now that the festival will be spread over the whole of February and make use of the microgrants to come up with exciting new things for the community to do during Winter Fest.

“I’m really excited about the 360-degree sled and slide hill. I wish we’d thought of it sooner – I wish it was my idea!”