The 14th annual Doors Open and Heritage Festival was labeled a success by organizers.

At the Crowsnest Museum, Shannon Ingram spent time organizing the Teddy Bear’s Picnic, movie night and the pub-crawl and she says it all went very well.

“It went really well despite the construction that's been going on in Coleman. We had a really good turn out. We had around 80 children that came to our Teddy Bear's Picnic, 20 people who came out to the movie night and around 50 people that came to the Booze and Bars pub-crawl.”

For the Community Market, organizer Jane Ann Reimer says the nice weather was a added benefit and that overall the turn out was good as well.

“It was a very good weekend. We had good weather. The day of the market was a little bit breezy but we had lots of people out.”

Reimer says that she had 31 vendors at the event along with music for people who attended to enjoy as well.

Ian McKenzie, a volunteer with the Crowsnest Heritage Initiative, says the overall event seemed to be a success.

“Generally it went well because the weather cooperated and most events seemed to go without a hitch.”

Overall attendance is uncertain at this point as McKenzie says they are still waiting on evaluations from the different groups.

“It's impossible to say at this point what the attendance was. We are waiting for all of our event evaluation sheets to come in. Each event is put on by a separate person or group so until those evaluation sheets are in and tallied we can't really say.”

According to McKenzie, some event's attendances seemed to be lower than previous years while some seemed to be higher.

The only slight downside of this year’s event was the construction taking place in Coleman.

However, Ingram says the museum was able to make due.

“We just had to do a lot of planning and rearranging for the actual weekend. I think that people found the museum fine and were able to park. We didn't really have any complaints on the actual day. We did go around to all of the businesses and dropped off signs as to how to get to the museum and we posted on our Facebook and Instagram. The municipality closed off the area that is under construction. We made due. It just involved a little more work than in previous years.”

Reimer was also pleased with how things went.

“They were really good. They finished up some water work for the creek and that was all done for us so we didn't have any issues that way at all really. It's just that people couldn't go beyond and park on the street to walk up to the park. We feel that it could've been a factor because it was fairly hot and people had a longer way to walk.”

McKenzie says he noticed difficulties but also heard positives regarding attendance near the construction.

“I think it was a significant impact on the museum. The construction took away the front steps to the museum so the only access was through the back door, which isn't handicap accessible and not very easy to find. I feel that any of the events that took place in Coleman were affected by the lack of parking and the difficulty of accessing some of the parking areas and events but I heard that they were fairly successful overall as well.”

McKenzie says the event was enjoyable and that he’s already looking forward to next year.

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