The international Peace Garden had a year unlike any other due to pandemic closures and restrictions. Since the U.S.-Canadian border was closed in spring the IPG saw a significant decrease in visitors, and revenue.

CEO, Tim Chapman, says they were fortunate to be able to receive funding from both sides of the border to help offset the financial loss.

“Obviously this wasn’t a year we wanted, it wasn’t a year anyone in the world wanted, but that being said we are an organization that was fortunate to be able to apply for and receive a lot of relief funding from both countries and we were really diligent about that to better prepare ourselves for 2021 and beyond,” explains Chapman.

“So, although we didn’t see a lot of visitors this year, especially Canadians, that was really tough. But, at the same time I think we did a really great job with staff on staying on top of things and following any updates, either with the Province Manitoba) or the State (North Dakota) and the two Federal governments, we really tried to stay on top of any opportunities that might help us get through a year where we’ve seen a big decline in revenue.”

Chapman says they will be looking deeper into ways to gain more revenue as they go into the New Year. “It is probably pushing 6 figures on the revenue side, but we won’t know entirely until into the new year once some of the programs tied to relief aid iron out,” he says. For example, the U.S. Congress is extending some of the funding programs that the Peace Garden has been able to tap into and so steps are being taken to apply for those extensions.

Visitor numbers were down by about 50%, with Canadian traffic being the largest decrease. “Usually Canadians account for 40% of our visitors and that was almost to 0 because of the border restrictions. You can factor that in, and then obviously there weren’t as many American visitors,” shares Chapman. “We were still surprised with as many that did come as we saw in the summer to camp at the campground, but not anywhere near where we would have seen in a normal year.”

Some ‘silver linings’ in 2020 for the Garden was that with fewer people on the grounds they were able to complete more projects. “Some of those duties the staff find hard to get to in an average year, we were able to get ahead on throughout the grounds. So, that was encouraging,” he adds. With contractors being more available this summer the IPG staff was able to source out the contractors to focus more on capital projects as well.