This weekend will be the first time the Luxton Spring Fair will be held without a rodeo for as long as any of us can remember – and it will be the new standard set by the fair in terms of the help it provides to other groups within the community.
The fair is organized and put on by the Metchosin Farmers Institute, a not-for-profit organization that supports numerous other groups in the area. The Triangle Athletic Association, the Luxton Antique Farm Equipment Club and the Vancouver Island Blacksmiths are some of the many groups supported by the revenue generated by the Farmers Institute at both their spring and fall fairs held on the Luxton Fairgrounds.
And now that revenue is severely diminished, according to organizers, without the rodeo aspect to help fill their coffers.
The rodeo – no matter how one feels about the event – was the economic driver of the spring fair.
For years, many didn’t even reference the fair when they spoke about it.
For many, it was simply “the rodeo.” And it drew a crowd.
Now it’s going to be something else, and it remains to be seen if it can survive as a separate entity. This year will be the new benchmark for what it will become, and we hope the lineups at the gate are equally as long as they have been in previous years.
We hope the people who were up in arms about the rodeo, calling for its cancellation on the basis of animal cruelty, support the new event by heading out to the fairgrounds and seeing what it has become – and help it continue to become something the whole community can be proud of.
We hope the hard-working volunteers at the fair and those who work with the organizations that benefit from it see that the community still supports them without a rodeo to attend.
They, and everyone else can do this by coming out in droves to see what this new version of the spring event looks like, and hopefully help it continue on far into the future.