The Casino Show Suffers From Horse Flu
12th September, 2007
The Casino Show that has been running for 119 years without a fail was unpleasantly cancelled because of the horse flu outbreak. It was scheduled for 13th and 14th of October, but when the Casino Showground and Racecourse complex got in a lock-down the organisers and the rest of the crew had no other option but to call off the show.
There are many consequences that follow such unpleasant cancellation, mainly the financial ones. Doug Bennet, the Casino Show Society president explains: “We are going to lose a considerable amount of money as it is, but if we hadn’t made the decision to abandon the show now, we stood to lose much more.”
The other Shows in the region were affected much less, some of them only had to change the show a little to substitute the horse events with some other performance. The Casino Show shares its grounds with a horse racing tract, which made it the only one to have to cancel the event all together.
“You can’t cancel them, because it’s not fair to the people who work hard on them, the show must go on,” said the president of Far North Coast Group of Show Societies, Greg Gordon.
These shows are extremely important for the local economy as well as cultural wellbeing, as they define the place: its unique appeal to tourists as well as local people. Kathy Ivaschenko, Casino Society secretary explained: “the whole town would feel the cancellation. We get about 5000 through the gate, so it will affect the town.”
Jannie Stevens, Casino Chamber of Commerce president pointed out that because the show has not been cancelled since it started running, 119 years ago, the hit is even harsher than most of the people imagine.
Despite many efforts of Casino Show Society to relocate or propone the event, nothing turned out to be possible and all the performers, organizers and other staff were left to keep the dreamy image of the show in their imagination only.
Kathy Ivaschenko said: “We couldn’t find an alternative venue. And the way the show circuit works, we wouldn’t have been able to get the people through the gate if we moved it to a later date.”
She later joked that as everything is moving into the virtual world, where the horse flu threats are substituted with various online viruses, maybe it would be safer for them to start doing Online Casino Shows.
