The NPO co-founded by brothers Martin and Jean-Francis Durocher, which has been organizing winter festivities in Old Montreal for 10 years, including a free New Year’s show, announces this news “with a mixture of nostalgia and pragmatism.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic, inflation of production costs, challenges related to labor during the winter vacation period and issues related to public and private financing motivated this decision,” said the NPO by press release Thursday.
Last winter, Montréal en fête had to cancel its festivities, saying it was short a million dollars to complete its budget.
“The sum of $125,000 per year that the City of Montreal gives us has not been increased for five years,” Martin Durocher told La Presse. But security costs have tripled, we had to put in place an emergency measures plan, our labor costs have increased, inflation too, so it’s certain that we have a shortage to win. »
Montréal en fête attracted on average between 180,000 and 200,000 festival-goers, but despite financial support from the City, Tourisme Montréal et Québec, as well as Canadian Heritage, the organization was no longer able to meet the costs of increasingly higher.
“The pandemic has changed our world in unimaginable ways, and although the decision to end the festival’s activities was difficult, it begins a phase of metamorphosis for the NPO in the pursuit of its social and cultural mission,” write the founders of Montreal celebrating.
