Build it and you will smile, Barrie’s two MPs are hoping.
John Brassard and Doug Shipley have launched a snow sculpture contest to help brighten up the often bleak winter days of February.
“Winter’s long, winter’s cold, let’s have an excuse to get out and enjoy it and let’s get families involved,” said Shipley, who is the MP for Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte. “Let’s make snow sculptures, let’s have some fun with it.
“(The contest is) just to encourage people to go outside and take advantage of the beautiful winter we have," he added.
The two Barrie-area politicians created the contest for residents in Barrie and Innisfil as well as Oro-Medonte and Springwater townships to encourage the building of front-lawn sculptures of any size, maybe even with a touch of environmentally friendly colouring.
The two decided to each run a contest concurrently so that residents from all four municipalities could participate.
Families are asked to post pictures of their creations on the MPs' social media pages and tag either @DougShipleyBSOM or @JohnBrassardCPC with the hashtag #FebruarySnowSculpture.
The contest will run to Feb. 26 with winners announced and prizes delivered on Feb. 27.
Area residents will be urged to 'like' their favourites.
Shipley and Brassard will award restaurant gift cards to the winners from each of the local ridings.
“Really it’s to provide an opportunity for families to get out and spend some time together,” said Brassard, who represents Barrie-Innisfil. “We’ve got Family Day coming, so we thought we would just correspond with Family Day with an opportunity.
"It’s just a way of getting families to be inspired and do something special within their communities," he added. “We’ve seen a lot of this community building during COVID.”
Brassard points to Jennifer Richardson’s Light up Innisfil contest that has run during the two holiday seasons of the pandemic.
Brassard said former Barrie politician Patrick Brown, who is now the mayor of Brampton, had success with a backyard rink contest, providing inspiration for the local initiative.
Rinks take a lot of work and need maintenance, he said, so they decided on the idea of snow sculptures, allowing all members of the family to work and play in the snow together.
“The hope is that we can drive down the street and see all kinds of different sculptures,” said Brassard.
The two MPs expect to drive through the communities on Family Day to check out some of the creations before the winners are announced.
“There’s been enough stress and negativity,” said Shipley. “We just wanted to do something positive.”
