SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - With the cancellation of this year's Caribou Carnival, which would normally take place this weekend, Yellowknifer looked to our neighbour for some pointers on how to breathe life back into our winter festival.

Les Antle sits in his submission for the Ugly Truck and Dog contest in 2005. The contest was a long running event at Caribou Carnival. - NNSL file photo

Whitehorse just wrapped up its annual Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous at the end of February.

The event began in 1945 as a week of winter sports for both professional and amateur athletes, and now, many years later, it draws people from around the world for events like snow carving, the one-dog pull, can-can dancers and the crowning of the Sourdough Queen and Sam Sourdough - the queen's counterpart.

Marj Eschak, the president of the festival's board of directors, said the 69-year-old event is successful because of its dedicated volunteers and the board's ability to make it a marketing tool for the territory.

"There's been a real core group going back several years that has made all of this work," she said.

"You have a lot of people here who have been here for generations and they take ownership over this. "It's not the new people, it is the old timers."

Eschak, who used to live in Yellowknife and attended Caribou Carnival in the 1970s, said she thinks because Yellowknife is such a transient town, it's harder to find those dedicated volunteers.

"I find that lots of the new folks that are coming into town, they'll come and they're happy to come out and be spectators, but they're not really excited about volunteering."

Mayor Gord Van Tighem said there are many reasons why Yellowknife's Caribou Carnival has struggled so much in recent years. Some of them include a lack of volunteers, competing events like the Snowking Festival, and bad press when things didn't go quite as planned.

"In recent years it's been harder and harder to bring it all together," he said.

"I think it's an event that requires a core group of people that get along with each other really well, who will research in the community those that want to do the specific events and encourage them to get involved and find someway to get them involved."

Caribou Carnival began as a gathering of trappers in 1955.

Van Tighem said the whole idea behind the event was to get people out to see their friends and neighbours after a long winter indoors.

"Northerners had spent several months in darkness in their cabins and the way to get over cabin fever was to come out in the snow and meet your friends and meet your relatives and party on the ice."

Eschak said she loved Caribou Carnival and even came back for it after moving to Whitehorse.

"I think the greatest strengths that the festival had there was tying your events back into the life skills that are necessary to live in the North," she said. "I really enjoyed the dog races and mutt mushing, the one-dog pull, stuff like that."

Van Tighem said he's going to miss the festival this year.

"I think (I'll miss) the opportunity to go out and walk around and talk to the people, some of whom you haven't seen all winter."

Whitehorse mayor Bev Buckway said maybe a year off is exactly what Yellowknifers needs.

"Hopefully the folks in Yellowknife, if they take a year off and realize that they're missing something, they'll get some renewed energy and go again. I'm sure it will."

A group of Yellowknifers are already discussing what to do in 2012, said Van Tighem, but for now talks are limited to cyberspace.

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