Community

The city of Barrie holds Winterfest each year, a community tradition and one of the top winter festivals in Ontario. The event is held at Centennial Park. It is free to attend, and no ticket is needed! There are two days to enjoy it. It is usually on the weekend. We attended twice this year. In Canada, we have almost half a year of winter. Someone feels so bored in the winter, so we went to the festival to have some fun.

The 2025 this event featured activities all day, including spectacular ice sculptures, lumberjack shows, family entertainment, drop-in activities, and much more! We saw a lot of ice sculptures. My son likes one of them, an airplane which has a lot of small real airplane models in the ice model. We watched it for a long time to figure out everyone's airplane name. Then we made some toasted marshmallows by ourselves. This time was my son's first time to eat marshmallows. He said it was so tasty. We ate some traditional food whose name is beaver tails and played with a lot of toys on the snow hill. We clapped to lumberjack shows. There were two horse-drawn carriages, and so many people waited for them. We met my neighbour at the lineup, and they said they needed a long time to be able to ride the horse-drawn carriages. At the end, we wanted to ride a helicopter. We were in the lineup, but my son was scared of the helicopter's roar. So, I think maybe we can ride next year because he will be more grown up, and the noise will be better for his ears.

Barrie Winterfest kicks off "Hello Winter" each year. "Hello Winter" offers outdoor arts, culture and community events throughout February. We love it and hope to attend next year.