Harbour City Halloweekend, Nanaimo’s Downtown comes together to celebrate spooky season
A gaggle of pumpkins in downtown Nanaimo on Victoria Crescent. (Jesse Woodward / CHLY 101.7FM)
The event brings a plethora of organizations together, each contributing its own spin on the programming to the weekend in Downtown Nanaimo (pictured). (Luis Zablah / CHLY 101.7FM)
This spooky season, Nanaimo is going all out by bringing the downtown community together to give residents the feeling they are in an 80’s horror film.
Tourism Nanaimo and the Nanaimo Pride Society have collaborated to host Harbour City Halloweekend, bringing a variety of themed activities from October 30th to November 1st. The event will include haunted tours, drag performances, pumpkin carvings, trick or treating, costume contests and general celebrations around downtown.
The festivities start Friday with an exhibition at the Nanaimo Art Gallery on the ghosts and spectres left by colonial resource extraction. The Nanaimo Museum’s Haunted Lantern Tour also returns with residents treated to spooky stories from downtown Nanaimo’s past. Friday night closes off at White Sails Brewing with a pumpkin carving contest and drag show starting at 6:30 p.m.
Saturday Halloween Day, the festivities continue with Trick or Treating and Boo bash activities downtown starting at 1:00 p.m. The day will be riddled with costumes, scares, live music, food, beverages and of course candy. A costume contest will begin mid afternoon at 2:30 p.m. The night will close off with a Halloween party at the Nanaimo Curling Club starting at 7:30 p.m.
The festivities wrap up with a Halloween themed Art lab Sunday at the Nanaimo Art Gallery.
Carly Pereboom, CEO of Tourism Nanaimo spoke on how this collaboration with the Nanaimo Pride Society came from a survey.
“ It really started with data, for the last three years, we're wrapping up our fourth year now, we've run a 2SLGBTQ+ experience survey, and that's filled out by residents and visitors. So from that survey, we hear all kinds of messages. One that really came through this last year was a message about youth and families and needing more year-round activations, not just in June, and certainly having more inclusive events that were shared by the whole community.”
Pereboom explained Tourism Nanaimo had already been working with the Nanaimo Pride Society for years. When the society expressed interest in expanding its annual Hallowqueen dance, the organizations decided to build a larger Halloween weekend.
This decision brought together a plethora of organizations around Nanaimo, including the Downtown Nanaimo Business Improvement Association, Old City Quarter, Nanaimo Museum, Vancouver Island Military Museum and Nanaimo Art Gallery, each contributing its own spin on the programming to the weekend.
Pereboom commented on the collaboration between all the organizations.
“ The downtown businesses have created specials and themes, and I think this really comes from community understanding that when you work collectively, and if everyone does a little bit of something, there's not a lot of onus just on one person, right? Or one business or one entity. It's about sharing that, load to really create something that not only is wonderful for residents and it's kind of making sure that everything's in one place, but also something that visitors can easily find, right?”
Kveton added the event can also make cultural institutions like the Nanaimo Museum more approachable (Luis Zablah / CHLY 101.7FM)
Beyond the individual activities, Pereboom added the collaboration creates a more inclusive celebration.
“ It's Pride-led, it's a family weekend, and it's the whole downtown showing up and telling people what kind of community we are, right? And I think that's what we learned in our survey, and that's what we're trying to deliver to [the] community.”
Steph Kveton, program coordinator at the Nanaimo Museum, talked about the opportunity the collaboration has created to connect with the community.
“It just helps to draw people from one space to another and sort of like open up the downtown, make it really accessible, make people feel like they're welcome in all of the different spaces. Then it helps to showcase the work that the cultural sector down here in downtown really does.”
One example is Halloween Nanaimo Lantern Tours, which guide people around key locations downtown, explaining history and integrating some scares along the way. Beyond the festivities, Kveton added the event can also make cultural institutions like the Museum more approachable, encouraging residents to discover the people and places that make up their community.
She describes the upcoming scene and explains the importance of events like this for residents.
“It's really lively down here, and it's really lovely to kind of have this big event where everyone's encouraged to kinda go into every store, go into every business, and get their candy, but also get to know their neighbors and their local business owners.”
Harbour City Halloweekend kicks off this Friday October 30th at 7:00 p.m at the Nanaimo Art Gallery and will continue up until Sunday November 1st, wrapping up at 1:00 p.m at the art gallery.
Further information and a full schedule of Harbour City Halloweekend activities and additional event details are available on Tourism Nanaimo’s website.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.
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