Paddlers won't be taking to the Mattagami River to race in the Great Canadian Kayak Challenge this year.
The annual Timmins festival is usually held in August and has been cancelled for 2020 due to COVID-19. Organizers hope to bring it back in 2021.
The announcement was made in today's daily health table for the pandemic.
“Our reasoning related to the kayak festival was quite similar to the decision making for Rock on the River, to be honest with you. The kayak festival is a community festival. It only happens because we have participation from the community and in particular from the business community who’s been a great supporter of the festival. Knowing what the business community is going through, it just wasn’t practical to try to move it forward and hope that the business community could contribute the way that they had in the past,” said Timmins CAO Dave Landers.
He added that they're not sure what the pandemic is going to look like over the next few months.
"We ask everyone to support our local corporate, retail and hospitality community as best you can," said Marnie Lapierre, Tourism Timmins' acting chair for the festival, in a news release. "They have been instrumental to the success of this event over the past 11 years. By supporting them, these important stakeholders will be able to support future community events, including the Great Canadian Kayak Challenge and Festival."
It's the second city-run event to be affected by COVID, as the city announced last week the Canada Day celebrations would be held virtually this year.
In the Timmins area, there have been 65 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Of those, 49 are resolved and five people have died. The Porcupine Health Unit is following 11 known active cases.
The health unit is aware of 3,835 tests done locally, which is an increase of 140 from the last report. There are 251 tests under investigation.
That tally doesn't include the testing of staff and residents at long-term care homes.
According to the health unit, 1,551 tests have been done at nine of the 10 facilities in the region. In addition to that, 50 staff at the six emergency child care centres have also been tested.
There are COVID-19 Assessment centres in Timmins, Cochrane, Iroquois Falls, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Hearst and Hornepayne. They are by appointment only and you must be referred by your primary healthcare provider or the health unit.
The PHU COVID-19 hotline is open today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It can be reached at 705-267-1181 or 1-800-461-1818.
The health unit is doing expanded testing on people with milder symptoms for a limited time.
The expanded list of symptoms includes cough, fever, and difficulty breathing as well as sore throat/hoarse voice, difficulty swallowing, loss of smell or taste, fatigue, muscle aches, runny nose, loss of appetite, diarrhea, and nausea or vomiting.
