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Muskrat jamboree a go
by Ian Elliot
INUVIK (Feb 27/98) - The town's Muskrat Jamboree will go ahead this year and has been set for the first weekend in April.
Problems that threatened the life of the festival are being ironed out and
the town is confident enough that they will be fixed to set April 3 to 6 as
the date of the spring jamboree. Organizers are still deciding whether to
declare April 6 as a full- or half-day civic holiday.
The town had delayed issuing a lottery licence to the
festival earlier this month until organizers could produce receipts showing
where some $43,000 from the past two events had been spent. Following a
meeting with festival organizers, Mayor George Roach said the books are
being re-created and he foresaw no problems that could stall the festival.
"They're looking for (the receipts), they will find them
and they will get them to us," he said.
But Councillor Donna Allen, a member of the festival's
organizing committee, complained that the bad publicity and delays issuing
the licence had made people reluctant to volunteer for the festival --
instead of the usual 30 or so people helping out by this time of the year,
so far she said only about 10 were -- and said that the festival was being
"slandered" by media coverage and residents talking about the problems with
it.
"You've got all these people in the community putting us
down," she said. |