Mitch Calvert
Now that the dust has settled on the 15th-annual edition of the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship, only the arduous task of taking down the site remained early this week.
But that process is becoming a more difficult one with each passing year.
“The [teardown] is getting more onerous every year,” FFCBC chairman Tom Fry said. “Everybody is over the party and nobody wants to work anymore.
“It’s going slow,” he added. “We had a real good crew for set-up and no problems during the tournament, but this [teardown] has always been a major issue and we had fewer [volunteers] this year than we’ve had in the past.
“We had hoped to get the street cleared by noon [Monday], but if we’re lucky we might have it cleared by 6 [p.m.]
“It’s only six hours behind, but it means a lot of hard labour on the part of a few retired gentlemen and a handful of kids,” Fry stressed.
Whether or not the tournament venue will remain at the Sorting Gap Marina next summer is a question mark—with part of that reason being the heavy burden that comes with set-up and teardown.
“We’re definitely going to be talking about [moving to] the arena, and part of the reason is this teardown [process], which should have a major impact on our
decision here,” Fry said.
“It’s getting to be too big of an operation and when you don’t have the volunteers out to do it, it’s really tough.”
Fry also said the costs associated with operating an independent site, including tents and port-a-potties, among other things, adds up quickly.
A move to an indoor venue likely would cut down their overhead.
Weather also wreaked havoc on the tournament’s revenues this year, with a small crowd showing up for headline act Kim Mitchell on the Thursday night.
“I think there were a lot of weather issues with Kim Mitchell,” Fry admitted.
“You can’t control the weather, and Friday was disappointing also, but we finished off with a solid day Saturday,” he noted.
Fry said they won’t know exactly how the dollars and cents add up until everything has been tabulated, but numbers certainly will be down from a year ago.
“We don’t have the bottom line because we don’t have all the expense numbers in, but our revenues were down about $30,000 [from 2008],” he remarked.
Meanwhile, Fry originally was going to hold the post as chairman for two years and would have been relinquishing his duties after this year’s event. But that may not be the case now.
“That’s still up in the air,” he said. “We’re still looking at it at this point, [but I have to] take a look at my business situation, as well, and then see.”
