Members of Perth town council discussed the recent Night Market during the council meeting on Tuesday night. “It was a huge success,” commented Councillor Brock McPherson, “There was a huge turnout; it looked like thousands of people were there. The restaurants had a really busy evening, which was great. I also talked to a couple of the street vendors and they were really happy with the amount of sales and people looking at their things. It seemed like a good thing all around, hopefully we can do it again next year.”

Councillor David Bird also enjoyed the successful event. “Every (merchant) I spoke to was highly enthusiastic and was doing good business.  I think this is an excellent way of bookmarking our non-winter months, beginning with Maplefest and ending with something like that.”

Mayor Fenik also suggested the Night Market become a biannual event. “Maybe this is something we should be doing once or twice a year. I thought it had the appeal of the Festival of Maples without the commercialism, just our folks. We should have more of that.”

Director of Community Services Shannon Baillon was pleased with the Night Market as well. “The goal of this whole event was to boost our businesses; the feedback we’ve had was very positive. Over 60 businesses stayed open, there were over 50 street vendors as well, plus musical acts and street entertainers.”

Director Baillon credited the marketing team with the incredible turnout. “We had a fantastic marketing campaign; the only print ad we did was The Hum. Crystal [Reinhard] and Kathryn [Jamieson] did an amazing job of creating the event and promoting it on social media.”

Baillon noted as well that in spite of the crowds, social distancing was able to be maintained. “I walked through when it was at its height, and I could still keep my 2-metre distance. That made me really happy.”

Councillor Brown extended congratulations to “all the staff that was involved. It was a huge success.”

Perth’s Night Market was held Saturday September 18 in downtown Perth from 5pm-10pm. Roads were closed to traffic by 2pm, allowing vendors to set up and prepare for crowds of foot traffic by 5pm. Over 4000 members of the public indicated interest in attending the event on social media, and thousands were in attendance.

Article by Janelle Labelle