Creek Daze was celebrated last Saturday in Roberts Creek. It is one of the oldest continuing events on the Sunshine Coast.
Roberts Creek Community Association president Scott Avery said that while the event harkens back to an older time, its success comes from adapting it for new generations.
“I basically absorb everybody’s points of view and somehow or another, when it gets down to the crunch, you just kind of do what you have to do at the time,” Avery said. “Which is why everybody loves Creek Daze. It isn’t packaged; it isn’t a dance pattern. It’s just everybody and anybody because it’s always different.”
This year was a little different for Creek Daze because it coincided with the Writers’ Festival and the Hackett Park craft sale in Sechelt, as well as the Rainforest Circus in Porpoise Bay.
In the past Creek Daze has been the only event all weekend, and according to Avery, people would hang out in the Creek all day long. He called this year more of a festival circuit, with people drifting from one thing to the next.
“There’s a bunch of people and myself who are looking at how we can coordinate these events throughout the summer in a way that complements the whole Coast instead of each individual fiefdom,” Avery said.
Avery said Creek Daze in its current form – with the parade, costumes, etc. – started in the 1960s or ’70s, but added that something similar has existed in Roberts Creek since it was first settled.
He compared the event to small country fairs, “where a little community would have pie eating contests and things like that,” he said. “It’s that energy where people aren’t rushed and they aren’t questing for money. They’re just gathering together for something. That’s what I felt about Roberts Creek this year, is it captured that.”
About 50 volunteers organized the event. Avery was excited to say that the entire day cost nothing, “because we made as much as it cost,” he said.
“Unfortunately in this day and age you have to generate money from these things so you can break even. It’s atrocious how much money you have to make in order to have an event, what with licences and permits you have to pay for along the way.”
Avery estimated that about 1,000 people went through Creek Daze, with 200 people attending the dance at the Roberts Creek Hall after the daytime events. This is where they made most of the money that went towards funding Creek Daze.
“One of my main motivations in everything is to try and pass all of these things on with some kind of knowledge from mentorship to this next generation,” Avery said. “What I’ve found with this [year’s] Creek Daze is there were so many babies, so many kids.”
