The Elmira Maple Syrup Festival committee has long been seeking younger volunteers to get involved with the decades-old event. This year, they’ve got that in spades.
The new chair of the committee is 25. The vice-chair is 24.
Matt Jessop comes to the chair’s seat as something of a family affair, as his father is a long-time EMSF volunteer who also served as chair.
Jessop said he felt ready to take on the responsibility and put his name forward this summer to run as chair. He was elected in November, and says he’s ready to take on the mantle.
“I volunteered since I was eight years old. I’m 25 now, so I’ve done it for over 16 years, participating in some way. I feel that I have a really solid understanding of how the festival works and runs. Since I was about 18 years old, I’ve looked after the festival sanitation subcommittee. I’m not really nervous because I’m enthusiastic about it and more excited that we’re going to be able to come back this year with an in-person event and do what we’ve always done.”
He’ll have input as needed from his father, Ken Jessop, who provides a link to the event.
“It’s very close to my heart as an organization. I think we do a lot of great things for the community, so it seems just like a natural step for me,” he said.
Jessop is joined by 24-year-old Quentin Meyer as the vice-chair of the festival.
“I’ve been on the committee since 2016. Matt and I, we both kind of [stepped up] together. I’ve known him for quite some time and he was looking to revamp the festival going forward in the next few years,” said Meyer.
“So we both looked at this as an opportunity where we can finally gather in person instead of our hybrid or virtual models we had previously. We thought this was the perfect time after three years of alternatives to really revamp the festival, and start a new generation of leadership going forward.”
Jessop and Meyer are particularly excited to do the work of chair and vice-chair this year as the festival comes back in person for the first time since the pandemic. In 2020, the festival was cancelled at the last minute, and virtual or hybrid events were held in 2021 and 2022.
This year, if the weather is nice, Jessop, Meyer and the rest of the committee anticipate more than 80,000 visitors could come to Elmira on festival day. He says an average year sees between 60,000 to 70,000 people.
“Just saying that we’re back and knowing how well received all the other events that are similar in nature have been in the last several months, we would say that we’re anticipating to potentially have our largest ever crowds, given that the weather is very much an impacting factor that could dictate how big the crowd is. But if we have nice weather, we think that it may be bigger and better than ever.”
In preparation for possibly the biggest crowd ever, the committee has decided to shuffle some of the festival’s features around. They are building a new festival headquarters, the pancake venue will be moved to the Lions Hall, the sugar bush tour loading will be at Elmira District Secondary School, a new updated website is live and new stairs have been built for loading people onto people movers.
Jessop says they moved the pancake venue to Lions Hall to ease congestion in the main downtown area, to allow people to eat their pancakes in an actual building and to attract more people to the events that will be taking place at the centre’s parking lot like the pancake-flipping contest, food trucks, entertainment and possibly a kids’ area.
Meyer said they’re making the changes this year to work out any kinks in anticipation of the 60th anniversary of the festival.
Since its inception, funds raised have gone to support local non-profits and charitable causes.
Jessop says the main beneficiary is Elmira District Community Living but dozens of other non-profits are also supported. He says since the event began in 1965, the festival has donated about $1.7 million.
“I think what we want to do and what our committee’s goal is, is to be able to preserve that tradition and the historical significance of the festival, but be able to make it something that continues to be a family friendly event, and something that people are excited to do,” said Jessop.
“I think that we want to keep it to still maintain and look like the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival in the future. And I think that hopefully that’ll be when we have our 75th anniversary or 100th anniversary that we can still preserve some of those things.”
