It was surely a hard act for Allie Bruni to follow after the Revelstoke Winter Carnivals's 100th birthday. Yet turnout at this year's premier winter event for the city nearly tripled attendance from 2024.
Despite the success for Bruni and her husband Stephane Riendeau in bringing back the winter carnival, as close to its historic origins as viably possible, she worries another year of the event won't be possible without more community funding and resources.
Bruni and Riendeau share some 25 years of event, film and music production experience, having worked for names as big as MTV, HBO and Comedy Central. Bruni also wears many hats in a busy life as a marketing coordinator and talent booker for Traverse, talent director for the Wicked Woods Music Festival, and a yoga instructor and dog mom.
They first got cracking a couple of years ago to bring Revelstoke's winter carnival, approaching 100 years old but seemingly forgotten, back to the stage after a decade-long hiatus. The city's 2013 Spirit Fest was the last time anything remotely resembling the carnival took place, featuring a rail jam hosted by Society Snow & Skate.
"It all started because I saw a picture of the original carnival on Facebook," Bruni explained.
She still remembers it vividly: a lady with a 1980s-style hairdo zipping down Main Street, formerly ground zero for the historic winter carnival, on a snowmobile.
"You should've seen the comments, like 50 people saying we should bring this back, 2024 style," Bruni said. "When I first took over the project, the first thing I did was go to Cathy English at Revelstoke Museum and Archives and look through the archives to see how they used to do the event."
While some traditional elements aren't attainable today, such as fitting thousands of people into the downtown and plowing in enough snow to run the outhouse races there, Bruni is nonetheless "trying to be a steward of what the original carnival was like."
"It went through a variety of changes, name changes," she recalled, referencing historic timelines of the carnival that the museum and Tourism Revelstoke have circulated. "It was started by the ski club and I think even the snowmobile club took it on."
As for Bruni and her husband, "We took it on because there is no other winter community event that's open to tourists and locals" in Revelstoke, she said. "It's like a winter Luna Fest."
After going all out to relaunch the carnival last winter, the couple approached this year more lightly.
However, despite the 2024 hype around the carnival's centennial return, more than 1,600 spectators tuned up last Friday, Feb. 14, for events such as rail jam and Guns vs. Hoses hockey, and a whopping estimate of about 4,900 appeared Saturday, Feb. 15, for the outhouse races. Bruni said this turnout nearly tripled 2024's, whose total attendance may have sat around 1,700 heads.
She added that she's sought to feature new acts and faces in the carnival and give more locals a platform for their passion, including by introducing the Great Revelstoke Quiz and variety show this year. It also thrilled her to see businesses heavily invested in the window dressing competition.
"I was in the grocery store last night and a mom was like, 'Ohhh, it was so great!'"
But despite out-the-roof participation by the community, there's an elephant in the room for Bruni that most people don't see: "We had very little financial support this year."
Due to not having non-profit status as the carnival's organizer, Bruni remains ineligible to apply for funding that other local groups such as the Illecillewaet Greenbelt Society and Revelstoke Local Food Initiative have access to. As a result, her carnival planning largely banks on sponsorship from organizations who are already "getting hit up by every fundraising event," and Bruni feels bad asking them for more money.
"We just cannot be doing this event in 2026 without more resources," she said, noting it comes down to needing more funding and support from the city and community as a whole, rather than just from sponsors.
"We can't be the cheerleaders until a week before when everyone hops online to post about it," Bruni explained.
With less reliable winter weather this year initially threatening the rail jam and outhouse races, another concern for her is ensuring a large enough snowpack can be plowed for the event grounds at Centennial Park. Bruni added that the park presents its own challenges as a carnival venue, but it's unclear where else the city could fit the outdoor events and their thousands of spectators.
She also hopes to get Revelstoke's younger community more involved and invested in contributing to the carnival in future years.
For now, Bruni remains grateful for resources and planning support from the Resort Municipality Initiative program, Cooper Equipment Rentals, Tourism Revelstoke and the City of Revelstoke the last two years.
Her next step is meeting with the executive director of the more financially stable Vernon Winter Carnival, to brainstorm how to get Revelstoke's entire community and municipality involved in helping this cherished event continue to flourish.
"This is a big event and it definitely feels like it has big potential, but we as the producers cannot keep it going without more community support."
