MARCH 2025 • WINTER FAIR • THE BRANDON SUN
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From the 50-50 raffle, to Farmgate, to VIP guests, to horse shows, to information booths, volunteer directors spend time arranging that, Swain said. And of course, at the ground level volun- teers carry out the work as well, some working eight to 10 hour days with jobs like opening gates for exhibitors when they enter the show area. “There and our countless vol- unteers that it takes to put on the show,” Swain said. “There’s so many different aspects of the show where the general public may not see what they’re doing, but they are there, and they’re working.” And the team is always looking to recruit new volunteers — any- one interested can go to the pro- vincial exhibition website and apply. The volunteer who first started in 1984 and eventually became hired as general manager — Krist-
jansson — said he has tried to step back a bit. Decades haven’t changed his reason for volunteering, communi- ty. But rather than big roles, the grandfather said he has been fo- cused on chipping in for set-up and tear-down of the event to do his part. “For me, it’ll probably evolve how much time I’m able to give,” he said. “I’ve got some other family com- mitments now. I’ve got grandchildren that are about four or five hours away, so maybe I need to sneak out there a little
bit, and that may im- pact a little bit of what I do around here. “But you know that the fairs and the ex- hibition are always going to be part of who I am.”
Ron Kristjansson (Matt Goerzen/The Brandon Sun)
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