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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - If there's going to be a 2009 Caribou Carnival, someone else is going to have to organize it, says the carnival's outgoing president.

The entire Caribou Carnival committee and the event's co-ordinator will end their tenure tomorrow at the Caribou Carnival Association's annual general meeting.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem, left, buys the first 2007 Caribou Carnival button from committee president Don Finnamore, right. This year Finnamore and other committee members will step down. - NNSL file photo

"We've been doing it for about three or four years now," said Don Finnamore, president of the association. "We decided we've had enough of it and (to) pass it on to somebody else. What happens if we don't get people? I guess there won't be a Caribou Carnival."

The committee needs to fill four unpaid positions: president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. It also needs a new co-ordinator, a paid full-time position.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem said he has no doubt people will step up to fill the vacancies.

"There's already people that have said as soon as they have the (AGM) we'll come there and work on it," he said.

Van Tighem said he recalled a year when the carnival was mired in problems.

"I remember one year I was called into a meeting by the president of the day and they said we've got this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem," he enunciated.

Van Tighem said they found solutions with the help of the community.

"They sort of looked and me and said 'You mean we can't cancel it?' I said 'nope,'" he recalled.

"The historical importance to Yellowknife is that it was always the celebration that winter was almost over. Everyone emerges from their cabin fever and gets out on the ice and starts to experience the first signs of spring," he said.

"The board of directors merely needs to provide the motivation and the point of contact for people who want to be involved in it and away you go."

The usual three-day event has been scaled back to a half-day carnival twice in the last five years, including this year when it found itself competing for volunteers with the Arctic Winter Games.

While some say the carnival has diminished in grandeur over the years, there has been effort under Finnamore's reign to bring back its glory days.

The Caribou Carnival began in 1955 and has been held every March or April since then.

When the carnival first started the event was actually a competition which crowned a Bush King. To win, a man had to be the brawniest, strongest and most rugged Northerner. The competition was central to the event until the late 1980s.

Other competitions continue to this day - including the Ugly Truck and Dog contest, beard-growing contest, and the crowning of a Caribou Carnival king or queen.

"The Cabane a Sucre is always a high point," said Van Tighem. "They put the maple syrup in the snow and you wrap it around a stick - and get it all over your fur collar."

Finnamore acknowledged there have been past problems with funding the event and that the positions are a lot of work.

"When I first took over, there were monies owing for two years or more," said Finnamore. Today, he added, "we're caught right up, so everything is ready to go. We just need people to help out."

He said while there are some well-known events, organizers are basically free to run with their own creativity.

"It's whatever you want to do."

The AGM will be held at 8:30 p.m. on the second floor of the Multiplex in the PSAV room.