The Board of Directors for the Royal City Farmers Market has made the difficult decision to cancel the market scheduled for this coming Saturday, January 7.
When we moved our winter market to an outdoor location, we were quite prepared for the usual west coast winter weather we experience. Rain and light snow are not a huge concern for us. We have rain pants and are prepared to wear them. However, we’ve seen a great deal of snowfall accumulate in our community, probably more so than in neighbouring communities. Some parts of New West have received more than 30 cm of snow in the last few weeks, and very little has melted away. It is very icy.
Environment Canada has predicted that snow will begin falling Thursday night and continue off and on until Sunday. Belmont Street is not an arterial road, or even a main road, and as such will quite understandably not be a priority to be cleared by the City of New Westminster the morning of the market. We completely understand. RCFM lacks the resources to clear it safely ourselves; ice requires a different approach than simply shovelling and our crew, while dedicated, is small and about 99% volunteer.
We understand it is frustrating when events you are looking forward to get cancelled, and believe us, cancelling one of our few winter dates is the very last choice we wanted to make. The safety of our staff, volunteers, vendors, and customers is of the utmost importance to us, however, and we believe our best course of action is to cancel this market. This is the very first market we have had to cancel in nearly ten years.
We are hopeful that Mother Nature will send some warmer temperatures our way and that we will be back to singing in the rain at our next market on January 21.
We want to take this opportunity to thank our supporters and we can’t wait to see you on Belmont Street again.
Sincerely,
Jen Arbo
President
RCFM
