After five year’s work, the Tumbler Ridge Fairgrounds are nearing completion, and should be done in time for the grand opening on September 8.
Grand opening, I hear you ask? Didn’t they do that already?
No, says Terry Cosgrove, who has been spending every spare moment working on getting the grounds ready. Last year’s event was the fall fair. There was some celebration around the naming of the fairgrounds, but it wasn’t a grand opening.
This year, though, the place is ready to go. The stage has power, the beer garden is finished, there’s 40 new trees that have been planted about the space (donated by LaPrairie for their fortieth anniversary), and Cosgrove and her team of volunteers (mostly her family) have added in a new Kid’s area. She points to a large area, with an entrance reminiscent of the gates to Jurassic Park. “We always do kids games for the Fall Fair and for Gristfest, so we thought, ‘oh we’ll rope in a section for kids.’ Then it kind of grew into a Jurassic Geopark and now it’s our Prehistoric Park.”
The new kid’s area is located near the main building, away from the stage and beer gardens.
Cosgrove says the Jarbas Noronha (“the guy who did the dinosaur toboxin’s”) is building a nine-foot-tall T-Rex, which will be installed soon. “And the District of Chetwynd is donating us a dinosaur carving that will go outside our electric perimeter fence.” She points to a large sandbox. “This is our Dino Dig sandbox. We will be burying all these little dino skeletons in there for the children to find.”
She points over to a dinosaur, standing on a box. “Over there is our raptor. And this…” she points to a wooden helicopter. “Is how we get into Prehistoric Park. Over here,” she says, heading back the other way, “we have a raised playhouse going in as well, which we should be starting on tomorrow. And a couple more of our Velocoraptor containments.”
She walks across a bridge over a pond. “In here, we have our theater. The plan is to show dinosaur movies. Probably not Jurassic Park, but Land Before Time and such. I’ve reached out to people I know to build benches for the kids to sit on and watch movies.
The area will be open whenever there’s an event, like the fall fair or Grizfest.
Ah. Right, Grizfest.
The Fairground was built for Grizfest, which has been in stasis since 2019. The plan was to re-start the festival once the fairgrounds were built, but that plan was tossed out the window when council refused to grant the TR Days society funding.
But, says Cosgrove, that isn’t the end of their plans. “It doesn’t dissuade us at all,” she says. “We’ve been here, working for five years on this project for Grizfest. We’re moving forward, we’re going to be looking for grants and it’s going to happen, one way or another.”
She’s certain, though, that when it does come back it won’t look like it used to. “
We are changing the way we do Grizfest. Some members of the current council don’t like Grizfest. They’ve openly said that. So it’s hard to work with that. But we’re a persistent group. The TR Day’s Society’s been around since 1988. We’re not going anywhere. We’re now finished building. The only thing we would probably do is put more trees in. But we’re ready. So what we’re focusing on next is Grizfest. If it takes searching for grants or whatever, then that’s what we’ll do.”
And will there be a Grizfest in 2025? Cosgrove hopes so. “We have a grant from the province of British Columbia for $17,300. I haven’t cashed the cheque yet, and if we don’t have Grizfest in 2025, we have to give it back. And if we give it back, what are the odds that they’re ever going to look at us again?”
But for now, the plan is to continue with the Fall Fair, then the Haunted House and possibly, says Cosgrove, private events. “People have messaged us about weddings and family reunion type things, so there’s a lot of potential for it. One thing we plan on is doing drive-ins. We’ve got a 30-foot movie screen to go on the stage and we want people to be able to come on their side-by-sides or quads or golf carts.”
People coming on September 8 should expect to see a tonne of local vendors, including food vendors. Twisted Seasons will be doing a BBQ, and there will be live music from the Mechanical Botanicals and D-Cline and the Slopes. “We’ll have speeches and ribbon cuttings for both the beer gardens and the fairgrounds itself. It will be a good day to be in Tumbler and everyone should come out.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
