Due to environment concerns from the Provincial Capital Commission, the organizers of the Waskimo Winter Festival have announced the event will not take place next month as scheduled.

Organizer Jeremy Parnes says those concerns related to wildlife in the area and the natural grasses that grow in the area along with other damage caused by people going on the ice and going into areas where they weren’t supposed to.

“Without activities like these on the lake, the true vision of Waskimo is incomplete,” Parnes said. “Under these circumstances, it is the opinion of our Board that it would be best to focus our energies on working with the PCC to come up with a solution for 2021 and beyond.”

“Losing access to the lake has presented not only programming challenges for our committee, but fundraising challenges as well. The festival relies on community partners to keep it going and growing, but the shift in access to the lake has made these efforts particularly difficult.”

Parnes does assure Reginans that the plan is for Waskimo to once again be revived in 2021 with it hopefully being bigger and better.