At its regular meeting on March 23, Peace River town council had five delegations to present their case in the Grants to Organizations first application intake of 2026.
Community Futures Peace Country general manager and founder of SongRise Music Conference Sherry Crawford presented on behalf of the conference set to take place in Peace River Oct. 2-3.
“We recognized a huge gap in development for professional musicians and songwriters in Northern Alberta,” says Crawford of why SongRise was brought to fruition.
“We had attended a lot of conferences over the years and used that experience that we had gained from those events and came up with our own concept.”
Crawford says the first event was held in Peace River in 2008 and it ran in the region for nine years, recently being brought back under Community Futures Peace Country.
“If you’re making music, performing, making any money songwriting, you are a small business, and we support small business,” Crawford says.
“We bring in people from all over the province to provide mentorship, collaboration and talent development,” she adds.
SongRise Music Conference requested $5,000 in the first intake of the program.
Peace Regional Hockey Tour U16 Grizzly Bears’ representative Jeannette Danks was the next to present to council.
“This year we have a group of U16 players who are headed to Scotland and Finland,” says Danks.
“It’s a player paid program and we’re looking for sponsorship to cover our jersey costs, extra expenses, and anything over and above will go back to families to cut their costs,” she adds.
Peace Regional Hockey Tour U16 Grizzly Bears are requesting $1,000 of assistance.
Peace River Boating Association’s Felix Bergeron met with council to explain why the association was requesting $10,000 of support for the Peace River Gold Cup. Organizers explained the Gold Cup has a strong positive community impact on the town of Peace River by driving tourism, supporting local businesses, and bringing the community together around the river. The event attracts visitors from across the region and beyond, increasing spending on accommodations, restaurants, fuel, retail, and services while showcasing Peace River as an adventure and river-based destination.
Peace River TriRiver Triathlon requested $8,000 to assist with Melissa Bucholtz and Jennifer Deschenes presenting their case.
“August 9 we’re going to have a sprint distance and a tritri distance,” says Bucholtz.
“Sprint distance is 750-m swimming, 20-km biking, 5-km running. Tritri distance is 300-m swimmimg, 10-km biking, and 3-km running.”
She added there will also be a team option for a sprint, one person swimming, one biking and one running. They will also have a Kids of Steel event for various age groups.
Finally, Peace River Wahoos Winter Swim Club Courtney Tipton spoke about the Annual Invitational Swim Meet. This year there are 56 swimmers in the club.
“This gives a good opportunity for our younger swimmers in our club to participate in a swim meet,” says Tipton.
“It’s an annual event that is a break-even event; we usually have about 120 swimmers outside of our club that come to the community.”
The event will be held at the Peace Regional Pool.
Final decision of funding in the Grants to Organizations will be made at the next regular council meeting on April 13.
Emily Plihal
Local Journalism
Initiative Reporter