When organizers of the Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival faced an unexpected spike in production costs that would have tripled team registration fees in 2024, they had two options: Cancel the event, or move it to Victoria for a year.
Fairway Gorge Paddling Club — which also runs the Vancouver Island Dragon Boat Festival in Victoria in August — is hoping to keep everything afloat by choosing the Victoria option, which is cheaper because of existing infrastructure.
Now temporarily branded as the South Island Dragon Boat Festival, the two-day event will take place Saturday and Sunday along the Selkirk Waterway near Jutland Road.
More than 800 paddlers from across B.C., Alberta, Oregon and Washington state are expected to participate.
The newly minted Nanaimo Dragon Boat Regatta, organized by V.I. Paddling and the Downtown Nanaimo Business Association, is being held in its place Saturday near Maffeo Sutton Park, though it is not affiliated with the Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival.
The non-profit Victoria-based Fairway Gorge Paddling Club took over the entire operation of the Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival in 2022, thanks to a COVID-specific festival funding grant from the province.
For 15 years prior, the club had been responsible only for the water portion of the event — not shoreside elements such as food, entertainment and toilets.
But without the provincial funding this year, the non-profit club would have had to draw funds from its other operations, said Erik Ages, general manager of Fairway Gorge Paddling Club.
“It would cause all of our programs to suffer — and teams would not have paid [the registrations fees].”
The paddling club is expecting the event will go forward in Nanaimo next year, with its original name intact, Ages said.
“We’re working with the City of Nanaimo, and have the next three years of festivals placemarked,” he said.
Fairway Gorge Paddling Club signed on to handle race operations once again in 2025, and is working with officials in Nanaimo to find a group that can assume responsibility for the shoreside, community end of the festival. “Which is right and proper,” Ages said. “It shouldn’t be some folks from Victoria doing it. We don’t live in Nanaimo.”
Fairway Gorge Paddling Club also has its own race to manage. The Vancouver Island Dragon Boat Festival will be held Aug. 24-25 at the paddling club’s home base on Jutland Road on the Gorge Waterway.
A similarly themed event, the Canada Dry Victoria Dragon Boat Festival, presented by the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival Society, will be held Aug. 9-10 in the Inner Harbour.
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