11 MARCH 2022 • WINTER FAIR • THE BRANDON SUN Volunteers are essential to successful Royal fair BY CHELSEA KEMP
do with the horses and the competitions taking place. She has the opportunity to interact with people from across North America and it is exciting because every- one there has a shared love of anything and everything equine. “You get to know some of those people that come back year after year,” Sweet said. She described the feel- ing when she enters the Key- stone Centre as a reunion between friends who have built a strong foundation out of a love of the show.
mendous amount of time and energy each year to en- sure the RMWF finds suc- cess. These efforts, Sweet added, are bolstered by the backing they receive from the Brandon community. “Everybody is involved. All of the businesses and ev- erything are involved, any- where you go while you’re their people are talking about the fair,” Sweet said. “It’s an institution.” She spends her week on the Keystone Centre grounds volunteering with the horses at the winter fair. Sweet works almost ex- clusively with anything to
the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair (RMWF) will be a wel- comed return. “I think those people that are going to be coming are go- ing to be really glad that they can be there,” Sweet said. She returns each year out of her passion for horses, the show and the people she volunteers with. “The group that runs the show in Brandon is amaz- ing,” Sweet said. “Some of those people have been do- ing that for upwards of 40 years — once they’ve done it there are very few that don’t come back and do it again.” Volunteers provide a tre-
More than 100 volunteers serve as the premium oil keeping the well-oiled ma- chine of the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair running each year. Gerri Sweet has been vol- unteering with the winter fair for more than 30 years making the trek to Brandon from her home northeast of Winnipeg to spend a week on the Keystone Centre grounds. It has been strange not making her annual pilgrim- age for the past two years, she said, and the return of
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