Preparations for Bright Lights Windsor Underway
Daniel Champagne wraps lights around a tree as part of preparation for Bright Lights Windsor. PHOTO BY BIRD BOUCHARD
Preparations are underway for this year’s edition of Bright Lights Windsor at Jackson Park.
Among the attractions are the giant Christmas tree, thousands of lights and a host of holiday characters throughout the park.
Daniel Champagne is one of many employees working hard to get Jackson Park ready for the festival. He says preparation is much more than just hanging up lights.
“It’s a lot of work,” said Champagne. “The worst part is bundles of tangled up Christmas lights. It takes patience and you have to want to do it. If you just come here to throw lights on a tree to earn a paycheque, then you don’t really care. I come, put them on nice and I take pride in it.”
According to John Fry, an electrician working on getting the lights set up for the festival, there’s still a lot of difficult work to be done – and the deadline is quickly approaching.
“The cold weather, rain, snow and whatever happens while we’re setting up outside, you can’t escape from it. Probably next week or the week after we will start working 10-hour days just to make sure we meet the deadline.”
Council unanimously approved the festival in October 2019. This year the estimated cost is $178,000.
This cost is down significantly from the 3 million dollars spent in capital from 2017 and 2018.
According to the City of Windsor, the light festival is a huge hit, having received more than 100,000 visitors last year.
The free festival of lights runs from Dec. 6, 2019 until Jan. 7, 2020 from 5:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. daily.
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