Even though Sunday morning’s new layer of snow may indicate otherwise, winter is approaching its end.
The City of Thunder Bay held their final Winter Funday activity of the year at Prince Arthur’s Landing on Sunday, giving participants an opportunity to take a cruise around the Spirit Garden on a dogsled.
Recreation and culture programmer Meghan Shanks estimates that more than 2,000 people participated in the second year of the initiative at some point throughout the course of the programs, which had run every Sunday since the end of December.
Throughout the winter they offered a host of activities such as pond hockey, tobogganing, and snow sculpting free of charge to all visitors to give people the opportunity to try different seasonal pastimes.
“The spirit of the program is to get people around who had never done (the activities) before,” Shanks said.
“We’re looking trying to find some newer winter activities that are coming out.”
Their final activity drew the largest crowd of the winter, something that was the goal set by organizers.
Shanks did admit having the dogsleds so late in the winter season was a little risky, but the high levels of snow and below seasonal temperatures made it work.
“We picked an activity that would attract a lot of people and we intentionally did that so we could end off on a bang and so next year when we start the programming again people will remember what we had been up to,” she said.
The dogsledding was offered by Boreal Journeys and owner Paul Amano said he was expecting the large turnout that showed up to the waterfront.
His outfit brought 20 dogs, which were rotated throughout the afternoon into the two teams of four pulling the sleds.
He said there was one group who flew into the city from Brazil who took a trek on a sled.
