The Town of Banff has withdrawn its application to host the RCMP Musical Ride in 2025.
Town of Banff officials say the municipality requested to host the iconic event in October in order to avoid busy visitation season and added pressures of traffic management in summer, but the tour planner for the Musical Ride indicated the events come to Alberta in late July into early September.
Jason Darrah, director of communications and marketing for the Town, said Banff’s special events policy does not allow new, large events to be hosted between the May and September long weekends due to the added pressures of visitation the event would cause.
“The ‘blackout period’ for new destination events in summer is intended to maintain a positive visitor and resident experience by rejecting events that would add to traffic and parking pressure,” he said.
In addition, council has directed administration to only bring forward new requests for budget consideration that can be funded from reserves, from the Housing Accelerator Fund, from grants, or come with associated revenues – not including transit or other emergent needs.
The anticipated budget for hosting the RCMP Musical Ride in 2025 is about $120,400. About $50,000 is anticipated to come from ticket sale revenues, leaving a $70,400 shortfall to be funded through taxes or reserves.
Darrah said these are significant cost increases from the RCMP Musical Ride hosted by Banff in 2017, which had a council-approved budget of $64,500.
“We looked at ticket sales that could occur and even though we’re forecasting it could be higher than previously recouped in 2017, it will still leave $70,000 towards either taxation or budget stabilization reserves,” he said.
Darrah said he started the process of exploring sponsorship, but it was generally in-kind support from other organizations.
He said Banff and Lake Louise Tourism is looking to increase events and attractions in the shoulder season, not summertime.
“As they work with us, they really want to see events as part of those non-peak periods to provide residents and visitors with opportunities, and of course, encourage overnight stays which is their main goal,” Darrah said.
Banff hosted the RCMP Musical Ride in 2003, 2010 and 2017 – the latter was part of the Canada 150 celebrations.
The history of the Musical Ride goes back to the North-West Mounted Police, who would commonly compete amongst themselves and perform tricks on horseback to break the monotony of endless riding drills.
In 1876, some of these tricks and exercises were performed at Fort Macleod in Alberta. This is believed to be the first public performance of what would eventually evolve into the RCMP Musical Ride.
Mayor Corrie DiManno supported withdrawing the application to host the Musical Ride in October next year.
“I can really appreciate this is a very Canadiana experience and that it’s a really special event, but in this case, it’s so important that the Town of Banff adheres to our own special events policy and not have special events during the peak season,” she said.
“We’re asking others to do that; we need to make sure we’re holding ourselves to the same standards.”
In addition, the mayor said she is not keen to put tax dollars or reserve money toward the event at this point.
“We’re going into another tough budget year and I want to be as lean as possible,” she said.
“I am sad that it’s not able to work, but it’s just not meant to be at this time for us.”
