Shawn O'Hara: Hello everyone. My guest today is Kelly Kurta. With her husband, Rory, they founded Kaemac Services Inc., which runs the Sidney Street Market, Candy Cane Lane, which is the Christmas craft show, and they work with the Port Sidney Marina running their Dockside Nights. They help other businesses put on events like staff appreciation events, barbecues, and luncheons. They worked with HBL Events to run Hockey Day in Canada, Century Celebration, and Touchdown Pacific.

Kelly is also the Executive Director of the Greater Victoria Festival Society, which runs the Victoria Day Parade and the Santa Claus Parade, which happened recently since we are recording this at the beginning of January. They also run Wicked Victoria and the St. Patrick's Family Fun Day, which will be coming up in March. Kelly is also part of the Event Safety Alliance Canada. She champions free family friendly festivals as important economic drivers and cultural traditions for Greater Victoria.

In recent years, Kelly has been a leading voice on the rising costs of logistics, traffic control, marshals, safety planning, and insurance that now dominate event budgets. She is actively seeking new funding partnerships and more collaborative approaches to event safety so these community celebrations can continue. Welcome, Kelly.

Kelly: Thank you.

Shawn O'Hara: Tell me about the Greater Victoria Festival Society, what they do, and why they matter to the region.

Kelly: Well, the Greater Victoria Festival Society was incorporated in March of 1992, and we were the umbrella society that sort of oversaw all of the festivals in Greater Victoria. Over the years, in the decades, many more event organizations have come up, which is amazing. So we are a community-based, nonprofit charitable organization, and we produce medium to large inclusive festivals, parades, and public gatherings across Greater Victoria. Our role is part cultural programming and part major project logistics.

We bring together performers, local makers, community organizations, sponsors, municipal partners, and volunteers to create welcoming events that people can access for free or by donation. They matter because we create shared experiences that build our community pride and our sense of belonging, and we generate real economic activity. We bring tens of thousands of people downtown or into a community area, and that supports local businesses, restaurants, hotels, artists, vendors, seasonal employment, transportation, and accommodation. Beyond the day of the event, it strengthens the region's reputation as a vibrant place to live, visit, and invest.

Shawn O'Hara: Because they are spending and they are partaking, and it is building up a culture and helping to build a culture.

Kelly: Correct.

Shawn O'Hara: That is great. At the Sidney Breakfast Club where we first met, that John Juricic facilitates, one of the panel discussions was talking about businesses investing, and one of the things they look at is culture. Victoria is not considered a place with a rich culture, a lot of performing arts, and so on, for businesses to want to invest, plus the lack of doctors and the cost of housing. So events that your organizations are putting on are helping to build that culture, which is good and helpful.

Kelly: Most definitely. We are starting to really showcase our cultural vibrancy in Greater Victoria and throughout southern Vancouver Island, for sure.

Shawn O'Hara: With these events, what are some of the, let us say, invisible regulations or the compliance pieces that most people might be surprised about? What are some of the issues that you need to deal with, like in the past few years, the increase in security and your role in the Event Safety Alliance Canada?

Kelly: You know, most people see the parade or the market day or the festival or the concert, but they do not see the months of the compliance behind it, for sure. Some of those invisible pieces include traffic management plans, emergency access requirements, crowd management, security planning, and the medical response needs that we have to have at our events. There is the fire safety and tent approvals, and all of our tents that we have for our markets are all fire retardant now. Food safety rules for vendors have changed with VIHA over the last three years significantly.

That is great because as market managers or festival producers, we now have an obligation to VIHA and to our vendors to ensure that we are compliant as well. There are electrical inspections, noise bylaws, and then there is accessibility planning. We want to make sure that the events are inclusive for everybody. Of course, there is the documentation that ties it all together that takes hours and hours, and the paperwork is always a lot.

Some of the other key elements are stakeholder requirements. Our city departments, our police, fire, bylaws, public works, roads and engineering, and sometimes provincial agencies are all involved, especially in the last ensuing years. For the Victoria Day Parade, we have had to work with the provincial government on the highways with regards to the parade. Each has their own standards and their own timelines as to when you have to submit and how soon prior you need to do that. It is a professional level of risk management and it is essential, but it is definitely not visible to the public.

Shawn O'Hara: For compliance like you and all the documentation, what do you need to prove that everything is ready? Is it that if something goes wrong, you can show that you had everything in place, or is it a bit of both?

Kelly: A bit of both, definitely both. The baseline expectation for mitigation has increased, and definitely the cost of delivering it has as well. We submit a permit four to five months prior to the event, and that is the city permit. Then we have our insurance costs, and what our insurance covers has changed over the last, well, since COVID basically.

Pre-COVID, most people could get insurance for events fairly easily, and it is not like that anymore.

Shawn O'Hara: What has changed in the insurance?

Kelly: I do not know if it was just the shutting down when COVID happened. I know when we spoke to our original insurance company prior to COVID, the biggest question was, do we keep our insurance? We were not doing any events, so why should we have insurance? The feedback at that time was, no, definitely keep the insurance because it will mitigate the cost when you come back to doing events. That did not happen.

Just as an example, it went from about $4,000 to $16,000 after COVID.

Shawn O'Hara: $4,000 to $16,000.

Kelly: Yes.

Shawn O'Hara: So that is four times more.

Kelly: So now we have changed companies and we work with an amazing insurance company. It is part and parcel, so they partly sponsor it and we pay for the other part, and we have been able to reduce it somewhat from that $16,000. Not to four, but it has come down a few thousand dollars. That has been great and they have been great to work with.

It was SeaFirst when I started with them about three years ago. That has since changed to Waypoint and is now Navacord.

Shawn O'Hara: Yes, that is a big shift for them. I know some people within there who are going through that, so that is great.

Kelly: Yes, they have been great to work with.

Shawn O'Hara: And also, as SeaFirst, a very local community company, so they were reinforcing that by supporting these events.

Kelly: Yes, and we actually met through a local organization. We met through Think Local First, which is a great organization to be a part of here in Victoria. We just started talking about insurance, and we are partners, so it is great.

Shawn O'Hara: Excellent. What are some of the, I am curious about the VIHA requirements with food?

Kelly: Most of what that is, is VIHA ensuring that the vendors are compliant. Most people have to produce out of a commercial kitchen. There are some products that are allowed to be made in your own home kitchen, but you are generally producing out of a commercial kitchen. There are pH requirements for jams or salsas or things like that.

It is also a tabulation of who is at your market. As a market manager now, we have a responsibility to VIHA to supply them with all of our food vendors that are going to be at our market, and if they are high risk or low risk, and if they are food trucks. With the food trucks also comes the certification with the fire department. They have to make sure that they have fire suppression systems in place.

It is quite ironic. A couple of years ago when we did the Sidney Market, I think I must have sent out multiple emails and made phone calls saying, “You need to phone Sidney Fire.” Sure enough, half a dozen of them did not. Come the day of the first market, one of them was shut down. Their fire extinguisher was ten years old.

It is little things like that that people forget. The vendors are so good and they are so great to work with. VIHA has been great too. One of the things that we do for the Sidney Market is, before the market starts, usually in March or April, we ask a VIHA representative to do a seminar or a workshop with us and with our food vendors so that they know what their expectations are.

A couple of them said it helped tremendously and that it was absolutely fabulous. I think we had about 25 or so on our call last year. That just ensures that they understand, and I understand as a market manager, because the rules change all the time. It is important that we have all the updated information and that we are educated on what is coming up.

Shawn O'Hara: That is more reassuring for people, and there is less chance of food poisoning and everything else happening.

Kelly: Very true.

Shawn O'Hara: Good, because I know some people are leery and they just do not know if there are any standards. That is a good-to-know thing. Getting to security and the increased police presence that some people have noticed at events, has that been a recent thing, or how is that affecting the industry?

Kelly: Events now require more formalized safety planning, more trained personnel, and more robust infrastructure. When route changes happen and security requirements increase, we now have additional marshals and more traffic control. We have fencing now, more signage, and more equipment. It has increased and I think it will continue to increase.

It is risk mitigation and I think it is an important part of major events, for sure. When regulations are well intended, the operational impact is real. We cannot just draw our maps anymore. We need certified traffic control professional plan development and category two maps that show where we need our traffic marshals and where we need vehicle mitigation.

I find it very hard because so many of our events relied on volunteers, and as much as we still rely on volunteers, moving forward, as many volunteers as we had, we need twice as many trained professionals now.

Shawn O'Hara: Do they train security people or, I guess, volunteers that are now trained? How does that work?

Kelly: Both. One of the things that the Greater Victoria Festival Society is doing, and we are very proud of this, is we are putting together training workshops for our volunteers and for our part-time staff. For example, we have disability inclusion and awareness training, and it is through the Disability Resource Center. That is going to be our first workshop coming up at the end of January, and it is full. We will be doing another one.

We are also going to be doing training with crowd management. At the Santa Claus Parade this year we hired a security company. We partnered with Inder from Western Canada Security. He came out with seven or eight members of his team, and they will be our partners moving forward as well at our events. So it is a shared responsibility.

As the operational impact is significant, and with our police force, it is tough. I know that they are strapped with their police officers and trying to staff every shift that they have. It is our responsibility as event professionals to ensure that we also have trained people on our end. We will have our security professionals, and we work with Go Traffic. They have all of their traffic control professionals that are all trained through Universal and Go Traffic.

It is definitely a shared responsibility between the event professionals and the city and the police force.

Shawn O'Hara: With the police force, who decides? Do you go and say, “I need 500 bodies for this and I need five tanks,” or who decides?

Kelly: The police force does. Victoria City Police does. When we do the Sidney Street Market we meet regularly, probably every quarter, and we discuss what the needs are for the Sidney Street Market. It seems very minimal, but actually the operational impact is very significant there.

We have vehicle mitigation on all of our side streets at the Sidney Street Market. We work very closely with the RCMP. Our staff will be getting training in 2026 on vehicle mitigation. As you mentioned earlier, I am fortunate enough to be a member of the Event Safety Alliance Canada, and we meet monthly and have conferences annually that we attend.

Shawn O'Hara: That sounds like it has quite the price: the insurance, all of the security, and they are not volunteering their time and their efforts. How does that affect the cost of these events? Where does the money come from, and how does that affect events in general?

Kelly: That is a very good question, and I have been hearing that it has caused some events to unfortunately not be able to happen. That is the reality of where we sit right now. Compliance and safety costs are often the first costs that we cannot wish away. We cannot skip a traffic control plan or insurance or leadership.

Those costs influence everything downstream, including how many vendors we can include. We can be very creative event producers, so we look at increasing our vendors. We try to keep our vendor fees and how we structure them at a level where we can subsidize community groups. My goal was always to offer free entry to nonprofits into the parades, and that is just not feasible anymore.

It definitely affects how we structure our vendor fees. We try hard to keep our events accessible and community focused, but the reality is, like you mentioned, when the costs rise as they have significantly, it puts pressure on our vendor pricing, our sponsorship targets, and our fundraising. The balancing act is that we are trying to maintain high standards while protecting affordability for our local makers and families.

It is really tough. The change in our recent Santa Claus Parade, with the beautiful route down Government, Wharf, and Johnson, has had an impact. LoJo is one of the prettiest streets in Victoria at Christmas time, but the operational impact for the Festival Society was about $16,000 we had not planned for. It is still tough because now, moving forward to Victoria Day, as we see Victoria Day taking the same route, we now have to factor that in and possibly additional costs because we may need additional fencing or additional traffic control.

Shawn O'Hara: That means too, with some nonprofits now being charged, they may not be able to participate.

Kelly: That is correct.

Shawn O'Hara: We do get frequent reminders from our, not just around the world, but also fairly locally or in this part of the world, that these measures are needed.

Kelly: They are. It is just the reality of the times now. Festivals are complex, and they have several layers that are very deep. Those costs continue to rise. We hope that we can reach out to our sponsors. I have definitely spoken to a couple of mine and they have been great.

A couple of them have said, “Absolutely, ask for this. We are going to do our best.” But we are in need of more funding. We get some funding municipally. The Victoria Day Parade and the Santa Claus Parade no longer receive funding from the BC Fairs and Festivals after their change last year. That was something that came about through BC Fairs and Festivals.

It was initiated by an amazing event planner here on Vancouver Island, and it was a great support through COVID. Without that funding, I am not sure how many of us would have survived. Following COVID, when we came back for a couple of years, BC Fairs and Festivals continued to provide that funding, and then last year they changed their requirements and they have excluded parades, saying that they are not economic drivers. That was the email that I received.

Shawn O'Hara: They are not economic drivers. That seems curious because when I have been to parades, usually I eat somewhere.

Kelly: Yes, or you travel from somewhere. We have great support from Destination Greater Victoria. We are members with them, and we had one of their business research and analytics specialists provide an economic impact study for Victoria Day for 2025. Just some fun numbers: for our 125th anniversary, our economic impact was $6.524 million.

Contributions to personal income, wages, and salaries were $2.269 million. Jobs that were directly or indirectly supported from our parade were 3,574, which equates to about 45 full-time jobs. There was a contribution to federal, provincial, and municipal taxes of almost $1.3 million. That is a pretty significant economic impact.

Shawn O'Hara: Yes, with those numbers, it would make a lot of sense to invest and to encourage.

Kelly: Yes, and it is great because we also see about 80,000 spectators on the streets during the Victoria Day Parade. That may be somewhat impacted this year because the parade has changed routes, and we will be heading down Wharf Street. Being along the water will be a beautiful opportunity. We love our American bands, and we encourage and support them to come back to Victoria.

Last year we definitely saw a drop because of some of the tariff impacts that were happening, but they are excited to come back. We have to find the funding somehow. That is why I am here.

Shawn O'Hara: For sponsorship that you look for, what do the sponsors get, if that is a good question?

Kelly: They get me. No, they get lots. We have our two naming sponsors for our Victoria Day Parade and our Santa Claus Parade. Those are Thrifty Foods for the Victoria Day Parade and Peninsula Co-op for the Santa Claus Parade, and they are incredible community partners.

Our presenting sponsor the last couple of years for all of our events has been CHEK Media, which we are grateful for. Dodd's Furniture and Mattress sponsors our One World Cultural Festival, which happens on the Saturday of the Victoria Day long weekend, and that has grown exponentially in the last two years. We also have some quiet funders, those being the nonprofits that work with us in kind.

We have the Disability Resource Center that we work with, the Francophone Society that we work with, and the Bastion Square Revitalization Association that we work with. The City of Victoria sponsors our parades both with cash and with their policing and traffic costs and waste management for our events. We are looking for more and we can customize any of our sponsorships.

We can work with companies to create something that works for them, whether that is an activation on site or something behind the scenes, or whether it is a volunteer sponsorship or an accessibility and inclusion sponsorship. We have an accessibility and live audio description area for our Santa Claus Parade and our Victoria Day Parade, which is phenomenal. We have lots of opportunities available and I am happy to have a coffee and sit down and discuss them.

Shawn O'Hara: So it could be cash, materials, people, and bodies.

Kelly: Yes. Following COVID, I have found, and just talking with other event planners, that some of our volunteers have dwindled in the last few years. Now organizations that are volunteering are being offered honorariums for their volunteering, which is not necessarily in the true spirit of volunteering. We do understand it because everybody is trying to raise money and time is valuable these days.

Sometimes it is just a group coming out to volunteer and not requiring an honorarium, things like that.

Shawn O'Hara: So an honorarium from the Society for their contributions. If they say, “We will supply 50 bodies, and you give us a certain amount of money,” then that helps build the spirit and the enthusiasm for their group within their own members. Plus you get bodies and they get some money.

Kelly: Bodies are great. Bodies are very impactful at events, and we have a wonderful core volunteer group. We have a wonderful event team too that will help train them. We always make sure that we have one of our event team with our volunteers so that they understand what to do, and if they have questions, they can ask and they do not feel that they are left out there in the cold.

Shawn O'Hara: If people are interested in volunteering, what do you look for and what do they do?

Kelly: I look for just passionate people. I love working with people that love events. Somebody said to me many years ago that you volunteer for the things that you love to do, that you wish you could do as a job, and I am living proof of that. I worked in transportation and logistics for 25 years over in Vancouver before I moved home.

I volunteered with Ronald McDonald House. I volunteered with my daughter's pony club. I volunteered with multiple organizations and still do to this day with the Esquimalt Lions Club, who are our amazing marshals. They have been marshals of our parade for over three decades. I moved home 14 years ago and started doing what I love to do, that I used to volunteer for, and now I do what I love to do.

Between running the events and helping organizations fundraise, we look for people who are passionate and who want to have fun. We love having fun. We make sure they all have hand warmers for the Santa Claus Parade and things like that, and coffee and snacks. They do everything from marshaling and staging our entries to assisting our vendors with setting up.

We love working with our vendors. I am so appreciative of our local business community, and I am jealous of the fact that our local makers are so talented because I am not. I see them hauling in their tents and their tables. Our volunteers help with that so it makes the vendors feel at ease too. We have developed a really good group that our vendors are comfortable with.

They like having that additional help because it gives them additional time to set up. We sometimes get help to work with our staging when we do our shows and our performances through the One World Cultural Festival, St. Patrick's Day, and our Wicked Victoria. Our volunteers help at our VIP area and at our accessibility area, and then as volunteer marshals along the parade routes. They are with our traffic control personnel.

Shawn O'Hara: Which would be either the police or the security or Go Traffic?

Kelly: They will not be with the police. They will be with Universal Traffic Control personnel, and they can be with our security team.

Shawn O'Hara: So they are not left alone. If something happens, there is a professional there and they are just like an extra set of eyes too.

Kelly: Yes.

Shawn O'Hara: What kind of rules or guidelines do you need to pay attention to, like around sponsorship categories, alcohol-related sponsors, cannabis, maybe political messaging for these events?

Kelly: That is a great question, Shawn. We have to be consistent about our sponsorship categories, exclusivity, brand usage, logos, naming rights, and how partners are represented across signage, digital, and broadcast. We work very closely with them to make sure that we give them the value that they feel they need within our events. For certain categories like alcohol and cannabis, there are additional rules around where and how messaging can appear, especially if the event is family focused.

We tend to stay away from those two categories because our events are so family focused. We keep a very clear standard around political messaging. Our events are community wide and inclusive, and we focus on the cultural celebration and the civic pride, not the partisan promotion. That helps protect the integrity of our events and ensures that the space feels welcoming to everyone.

Political messaging can discourage people from coming to the events, and we do not want that to happen.

Shawn O'Hara: That is an understatement that it can sway them or discourage them. Is there a particular regulation or a permit process or even a compliance requirement that is either challenging or outdated, and how does that affect your day-to-day operations?

Kelly: One of the biggest challenges is when processes are not aligned to the realities of event planning timelines that we work through. Festivals are complex, and when approvals and route changes or requirements shift late, it creates major cost and communication impacts. The intent of regulation is safety, and we support that, but the systems need to work with our nonprofits who are delivering these events for the public's benefit.

Consistency, predictable timelines, and cleaner coordination would make a huge difference. There are many times when we will submit our permits, but we will not get information back until we have already put out a communication plan. What that does is sideline everything that we have done, and it increases the cost because we have to redo it all over again.

Shawn O'Hara: This is from the various government levels, or would you say?

Kelly: This year specifically, it was from the municipal level. Unfortunately, we had about seven weeks’ notice of the change for our Santa Claus Parade route this year. It definitely was inconvenient, but more so it was financially challenging. We understand their need to reduce the operational impact, but that reduction for them sent us $16,000 in unanticipated costs with additional traffic control, new equipment and fencing, revised traffic management plans, and, most importantly, our communications.

We had sent out communications. We have a notification letter that goes out, and we had sent that out to a huge majority of our database at the end of September. Since COVID, we have tried to do it a couple of months ahead of time. Our hotels, our transportation partners like Wilson's Transportation, the Coho or Black Ball Ferry, BC Ferries, and others need that information so people know and so they can let their customers know.

We also send it to the care homes and things like that around Victoria and all of our entertainment facilities, our restaurants, and our hospitality sector so they can plan for staffing and things like that. The re-advertising and the resubmission of our communications to everybody came again at a very late time, and that affected many of our stakeholders for sure. All we are really asking for is to have frequent table talks leading up to the event.

It took significant time on my part to redo all these plans with the shortened timeline, and these are not the only events that I do, so it affected the other events. Nonprofits cannot absorb sudden five-figure cost increases on fixed budgets that are already too small. The expectation that a community nonprofit should simply pay the difference is not reasonable or sustainable.

Shawn O'Hara: Yes, especially for the tinier nonprofits who are drawing a lot from the resources of their members, plus fulfilling everything else that they do as a nonprofit.

Kelly: Exactly.

Shawn O'Hara: Do you know what caused the route change?

Kelly: My understanding was operational impact and safety. We were advised that the new route was felt to be a safer route and that it would reduce the operational impact for the city and the police department. That was my understanding.

Shawn O'Hara: I guess for attendees, what is the route switch, so they do not set up their chairs in the wrong spot?

Kelly: The route switch will definitely be communicated, and I think this is the way Victoria Day is going to go. We just had our debrief from the Santa Claus Parade, which was good. I think we are going to be marshaling around the Parliament Buildings very similarly to how we do for the Santa Claus Parade. It will step off at Belleville and Government Street.

It will head north on Government and then turn left onto Wharf Street. Then we will head east on Johnson and we will disperse north on Government Street by the Chatham area. That is the current plan, but that could change.

Shawn O'Hara: That is the Victoria Day Parade.

Kelly: That is the new Victoria Day Parade, yes.

Shawn O'Hara: Because it used to start at Mayfair.

Kelly: It has started at Mayfair for over 40 years.

Shawn O'Hara: Is this the first year of the shortened route?

Kelly: Yes.

Shawn O'Hara: So it is not like I missed something.

Kelly: No. Again, when we talk about layers, there are definitely a lot of layers for Victoria Day. There are our American bands, who are wide. They are definitely wide.

I have been talking with them and hoping that they can march down Wharf Street. That is my goal. Wharf is the narrowest of the streets, so we will see how that goes. Then we also have the Douglas Mile, which I love. I think it is great.

We have done it for, I think, five years now, and our team at the Festival Society got more involved this year. The Douglas Mile used to start at Burnside and Douglas and it would start around 8:40 in the morning and run to Pandora. It was a one-mile race, and the first couple of years we raised a few thousand dollars for the Parkinson's Wellness Group of Victoria. This past year, very exciting, we raised over $110,000.

That was actually one of my biggest concerns with the route change: how do we accommodate the Douglas Mile? My understanding during our debrief at the Santa Claus Parade with the city is that we are speaking with arts and culture, and they did say that they have measured the route and it does sound like the route is exactly one mile. So we are going to make it work. That money is very important to that organization and I do not want to see them lose it.

It is going to be different, but it is still the Victoria Day Parade. It is still going to be great. It is going to be great that people are downtown with all the local restaurants that are downtown. I have been looking at it because it was a big change for us.

We have our reviewing stand, which is normally right at Centennial Square. The military is amazing and they work with us and they set up a section of chairs and an area where wheelchairs can be set up. On the other side we have our accessibility area with our live audio description. That area will be interesting to figure out where we are going to set up and how we are going to do that placement because we judge the American bands, and they accumulate points for the other parades that they do.

It will be an interesting one. I think as far as the impact on some of the tourism places, I think it will be a positive impact. The Inner Harbour is beautiful, as we know.

Shawn O'Hara: It will be interesting to see the overall economic impact because we would always go as close to the start, coming in from the West Shore for the people who do not know Victoria. Too bad I cannot draw a map here, but we would go close to where it started because it was easy to get to and then easy to leave and not have to go directly downtown. We would also plot whatever restaurant that year we would stop at to pick up breakfast to get to a good spot early. That will be different.

Kelly: Yes, I have to agree with you on that. I know many people that I have spoken to come in from up island, from Colwood, from the Peninsula, and they are very similar to you. They go to the beginning of the parade and they will park in behind Burnside or the old Canadian Tire up on Douglas. They get their tents and their chairs and their breakfast, and they are there at seven o'clock in the morning.

I see them every year. I do think that will definitely have some impact on our attendance, which could definitely impact the economic value of the parade. I hope it does not. I truly hope that people embrace the new route and they come down and they try it, or they take public transit, or they park on the other side of the Blue Bridge and walk over, things like that.

That is going to be some of our communications going out. We have a rigorous plan to put out some early communication in February and March about the parade and where it is going to be. We are hoping that the businesses downtown will also come on side with us and help us market it because it is a great opportunity to go into some of the local restaurants downtown.

Shawn O'Hara: It is one of those things: do it and see the impact. Even the merchants or the restaurants that used to be along the route, if they say, “Hey, what happened? May used to be a great day,” they will see their impact. If they have issues, that can be contrasted with how much more is spent downtown, or less.

Kelly: I know I was also speaking with my good friend who is the general manager at Mayfair, and he was saying that he was disappointed that it was not going to be there this year because it is kind of their thing. It has always been that the food court will be open and people will go in there. We have had a great run. The Ruby is another one, by the Hotel Zed.

Of course, before Denny's was no longer there, we always used to buy breakfast for our marshals at Denny's. I know there are lots of places along the route where people would stop and grab breakfast and the families would meet. The cousins would meet, and you would see the group of 30 there with their 10 by 10 tents, and I have actually seen some propane heaters.

Shawn O'Hara: We will see. I guess that is what we have to do. Change something, see if it works better. Great. If it does not, can we switch back and go from there?

Kelly: That is the question, right? If it does not work, do we want to revert? We had the conversation: what if the bands cannot make it work?

Shawn O'Hara: Right.

Kelly: I would hate to see those American bands not come up here because it has been a rite of passage for the seniors for many, many years. Even when I marched in the band with Dave Dunnet at Oak Bay High School way back in 1985–86, it was a rite of passage for the grade 11 and 12 students. We have watched some amazing connections between our Canadian bands and our American bands.

They work together now a lot throughout the year, and then they come together at the Victoria Day Parade weekend when they do their parade of bands on the Sunday and their drum battle. It is like they are all friends. It is definitely going to be impactful. We are going to hope for the best and promote that.

It is still an incredible weekend. The One World Cultural Festival that Gordy Dodd sponsors has, as I said, grown significantly in the last two years. We close down Belleville Street on the Saturday and we have vendors and food trucks, and then we have a full cultural performance from 11 in the morning till six o'clock at night up on the Parliament Buildings on the Saturday.

It is a great time. There are bouncy castles and face painting, and again, it is all free. It is all local performers and it is all free. That is something that we really work hard at and are proud of: we support our local artists and our musicians.

We love getting them out in front of the public, and they do a great job of performing.

Shawn O'Hara: We will have to put as much as we can of that, or at least links, into the show notes. For anybody listening, since this is only audio, they can go on their app, click through to the show notes to access those events. If they are outside of Victoria, then they can pick a time to come visit.

Kelly: Yes. We get a lot of that. There are a lot of people who plan a trip around these events. Hotels are probably almost fully booked by now for the May long weekend.

Shawn O'Hara: That is neat. There has been some chatter or questions or concerns going around that major funding and RFPs, which are requests for proposals, are going to the major event organizers and that nonprofits are receiving smaller funding or are just declined for additional funding. Is that really happening, or can you clarify what I have been hearing?

Kelly: Yes, it seems like we have been seeing that over the last couple of years. Nonprofits are professional event producers. We operate under the same and sometimes even stricter safety, insurance, compliance, and risk management requirements as any for-profit company. We are coordinating with police, fire, bylaw, engineering, accessibility, sponsors, and volunteers, and we are delivering free and low-cost public access, versus the for-profits that are charging ticket prices and things like that.

In the bigger picture, I saw it and was speaking with the Victoria Foundation about their “Architects of Belonging” civil society impact study. The charitable and nonprofit sector here in Greater Victoria generates $5.4 billion in economic activity, and that is an increase of over a billion dollars a year since 2018. It supports over 60,000 jobs and contributes around $350 or $360 million in municipal taxes annually.

The idea that nonprofits are small operators just is not true. We are builders of belonging, of social wellbeing, and of real economic infrastructure. I personally work with many nonprofit producers of events that are exceptional, talented, and educated. The challenge is that when large RFPs and major funding streams are reserved only for the large for-profit professionals, it ignores the fact that our nonprofits are already delivering professional grade, high-risk, high-impact public events, but we are being asked to absorb the rising safety and compliance costs without any support.

That is the tough part: we are still paying all the costs for the risk management, for the mitigation, and for the safety. When I was speaking with BC Fairs and Festivals, to say that a parade is not an economic driver and now to have changed the modeling so that the event must be $100,000 or more to receive funding from BC Fairs and Festivals, that is a problem. Not all events are $100,000 or more.

My true hope for 2026 and moving forward is that our governments and our funders will start to recognize nonprofits not as hobbyists or side-project organizers but as essential civic partners who deliver billions of dollars in public value every single year. We work collaboratively with each other, and that is one of the things that we have started to do more and more. I know I have personally, and the other nonprofits that I work with, collaborate together, cross-promote each other, and try to find ideas within ourselves to see how we can be better.

We are always looking to do better. We do need the funding, and without that support in the funding, whether it is municipally or regionally or federally, we are going to see a lot of community organizations disappear.

Shawn O'Hara: That would be sad. That is like tearing up the tapestry.

Kelly: It is kind of like ripping up the foundation of Victoria. Victoria has always been a city of festivals. I remember years ago, going back to the eighties, we had so many events. The Festival Society started the onshore activities for Swiftsure way back when.

We used to do the lighted boat parade in the Inner Harbour. We used to have a Miss Snowflake and Master Jack Frost contest with the elementary schools at the malls, and it would drive people to the malls throughout November. We used to do the teacup races in the Inner Harbour. We used to do the long-boat or canoe races.

There were so many events and it was great. Of course, you remember our incredible folk festival that we used to have. We were the city of festivals. If we lose track of our nonprofits that have consistently and always been there and have always continued to provide these festivals for everybody, if we lose that, we are losing the heart of who we are.

Shawn O'Hara: That would be sad. I had forgotten about a big chunk of those too. That is one chunk of your life, Kelly, dealing with the Greater Victoria Festival Society. Tell me about Kaemac Services, what you do, and those types of events.

Kelly: Kaemac Services was born probably 25 years ago when I was working in transportation and logistics. That was my original career. We worked in trucking and transportation, and it was my husband and I, and we named it after our girls. When we moved back home to Victoria in 2014, we continued under the Kaemac umbrella.

We thought it would sort of taper off, and it did not. More and more people started asking us to do events and to help them fundraise and to work on capital campaigns, and so it just grew. Right now we are in the process of finishing our website, and we offer a lot of different services. We do everything from small staff appreciation days to a Christmas party to an Easter party to the Sidney Street Market, which we love.

We love working with the Town of Sidney, and we secured the contract for two years with an additional two times two, so six years working with them. We have loved every minute of it. We have about 160 vendors at our Sidney Street Market, and it is like an international food truck festival. It is a great time to come down for dinner on a Thursday night.

We will do corporate retreats if people want them. We had the pleasure of working with Port Sidney Marina, and we created just a real cool vibe down in Sidney. It is like an extension of the Sidney Street Market, so it is Dockside Nights. It was a small curated market right on the docks, right in Port Sidney at the marina, which many people thought was a private dock, myself included.

We turned it into one fun Friday night. Port Sidney is part of the Mill Bay Marine Group and their Adventure Co. platform. We have had a lot of fun. We get local musicians to come down on Friday nights and they perform from five to eight o'clock.

Anybody and everybody is welcome. This year we have a couple of things in the works for it, which will be exciting. You can grab a hot dog or a burger from our food partner down there, and I think this year you might be able to grab a beer as well, which would be great. We have been very lucky. What we thought was going to be a lead into retirement when we moved home has turned into a whole number of branches of connecting with community.

That is what we do: connecting and talking with the community and helping the community. That is what my mother and my grandparents did, and so I am proud to be a part of that as well.

Shawn O'Hara: Any upcoming dates you want to share?

Kelly: March 15th is our St. Patrick's Festival in downtown Victoria. We have over 90 vendors, which is great. It was such a pleasure: the Consulate of Ireland from Vancouver reached out to us and they are looking at coming over and having a look at what we do because they have seen it and they love the St. Patrick's Festival.

Shawn O'Hara: You said the Consulate of Ireland for St. Patrick's, so that is quite the endorsement.

Kelly: It is quite the endorsement. I am very proud. I was very excited when Cathy and her team reached out, and I am extremely excited to possibly collaborate with them in 2027 on an event on the other side of the water.

Shawn O'Hara: That will be great. Any other events coming up?

Kelly: Yes. May 16th to 18th is our Victoria Day weekend. The Saturday is our One World Cultural Festival at the Parliament Buildings. Sunday is our parade of bands and our drum battle. Then, of course, Monday morning, bright and early, is our Victoria Day Parade. We are super excited about that.

June 4th is the opening of the Sidney Street Market, 5:30 to 8:30 every Thursday night on Beacon Avenue until September 10th. The last Sunday in October is our Wicked Victoria. It will be our 11th year. I still remember the day when I met with Trina Notman and she created “Victoria BOO” when we still had Tourism Victoria, and they wanted to create a festival for the shoulder season in October.

So we came up with Wicked Victoria and it has been great. Then, of course, the last Saturday in November is our annual much-loved Santa Claus Parade, where we kick off Christmas on the West Coast. I should say that I have to give kudos: the kickoff to Christmas on the West Coast is definitely the Ladysmith Light Up, so shout out to them. They are amazing.

What I love so much about Christmastime is that I think we have six or seven parades in the course of two weeks. Everything from Ladysmith Light Up, to the Campbell River parade, to the Santa Claus Parade in Victoria, to the Sidney Sparkles Parade. You have the Esquimalt Celebration of Lights and Sooke has a parade. If parades are not economic drivers, I am not sure what is, because everybody is at a parade for two full weeks at Christmastime.

Shawn O'Hara: For tourists who want to, at least in the rest of Canada, avoid the snow, they can come here because it is rare that we have snow or even ice for these parades.

Kelly: That is very true. I think there was one year where it did start snowing and the crowd erupted in jubilation. My good friend Wendy at the IEOA Truck Parade runs another favourite parade of mine where they raise thousands and thousands for the food banks. There is nothing quite like standing on the corner in downtown Victoria with 50,000 or 60,000 people on the streets and Santa and Mrs. Claus are singing “Here Comes Santa Claus” and so are all the people who are watching.

Shawn O'Hara: Neat. It sounds like you do a lot of fun stuff.

Kelly: I do. It is fun, and I keep reminding myself of that when it gets hard.

Shawn O'Hara: Just before we wrap up, Kelly, when you think about the long-term vision for the Greater Victoria Festival Society, what does a sustainable, compliant, and vibrant festival landscape look like?

Kelly: To me, Shawn, sustainability means that we can deliver safe events without pricing out local makers, families, or community groups. Somehow we have to figure out how to make these affordable. A vibrant festival landscape is inclusive, culturally respectful, and economically meaningful. Events need to remain free and affordable, where local businesses, tourism, and community wellbeing all benefit.

To get there, we need predictable processes municipally and regionally, realistic funding for the true costs of safety and compliance, and committed partnerships from our businesses and sponsors who see festivals as essential community infrastructure. That is what they are. The Victoria Day Parade is one of the foundations that built tourism in Greater Victoria, and we need the community to keep showing up.

Attendance, volunteerism, and local pride are what make these events worth protecting. More than anything, the integrity and the sustainability of these events are what our goal is at the Festival Society.

Shawn O'Hara: As you were saying earlier, for one of them, $1.3 million in taxes is a huge driver in some ways. Not that we love paying taxes, but that is certainly an encouragement for government support at all levels.

Kelly: I think so. Sometimes I see, and it is all public knowledge, where funding goes from our municipal governments and our regional governments. I really think they need to look at the actual economic impacts of some of the events that our nonprofits are doing. I love all of the things that we do in Victoria. I love Rifflandia and I love Sunfest.

We really need to look at where the money is and where the economic impact is happening, and I think that needs to be a consideration. It needs to be a measurable consideration so that it is fair across the board.

Shawn O'Hara: That could be a whole other discussion: paid and unpaid, or the cost of paid events and how that impacts security and affects those costs and so on. That would be another time. Just very briefly too, you mentioned Kaemac. Can you touch on some of the events that you have done, as a little plug for that side of your life?

Kelly: Yes. I have a great friend who is an incredible event producer, Heidi Barlow-Lee from HBL Events, and two years ago she invited me to join her to help produce the Hockey Day in Canada, the Touchdown Pacific with the BC Lions, and then finally Century Celebration last year, celebrating the Victoria Cougars’ 100th anniversary of their win. Hockey Day in Canada did win Canadian Event of the Year.

We had the pleasure of a few of us going back to Toronto and experiencing that, which was great to see little Victoria up there getting some recognition. We have many other incredible event producers on the island here who were at that event and who won some awards, which was great to see. We do the Sidney Street Market, we do Dockside Nights, and we do the Candy Cane Lane Christmas craft show and festival at the Saanich Fairgrounds.

We also manage all of the parking for the last two years at the Saanich Fair, which has been exceptional. We have an incredible team. They are very well trained, and we work very closely with the traffic control personnel that the Saanich Fairgrounds work with as well. Working with the Saanich Fairground team has been truly amazing.

We consult on fundraising or capital campaigns for nonprofit organizations. We have run golf tournaments. I was also the chair of the Ronald McDonald House golf tournament for 10 years here on Vancouver Island, bringing it from $27,000 to a quarter of a million dollars. In our 10 years, we raised about $1.2 million for the charity.

We just love what we do. We have fun.

Shawn O'Hara: That is excellent. How can people get a hold of you either for Kaemac or for the Greater Victoria Festival Society?

Kelly: They can email me through the Festival Society website, or they can email me at kelkurta@gmail.com. We are in the process of finishing our website. The sky is the limit, I guess, for 2026.

Shawn O'Hara: Good. I will put that into the show notes. My guest has been Kelly Kurta, who runs Kaemac Services, running a variety of events, and is also the Executive Director of the Greater Victoria Festival Society, running events including the Victoria Day Parade and the Santa Claus Parade and many others. Thank you so much for being here, Kelly.

Kelly: Thank you, Shawn. It has been such a pleasure, and I guess I will see you at the next Sidney Breakfast meeting.

Shawn O'Hara: Yes. And that is a wrap.

Links 

1. Kaemac Services Inc.
2. Greater Victoria Festival Society 
3. Santa Claus Parade (Peninsula Co-op Santa Claus Parade) 
4. Wicked Victoria
5. One World Cultural Festival (Gordy Dodd’s One World Cultural Festival)
6. Sidney Street Market
7. Candy Cane Lane Winter Festival
8. Dockside Nights at Port Sidney Marina