With the Christmas season in its final days, the City of Winkler is celebrating a successful month of events at the Meridian Exhibition Centre. Mayor Henry Siemens noted this was the first holiday season the facility was fully open, and operational, with no public health order restrictions in place.

"It has been really exciting to see," said Siemens. "The facility has worked extremely well. As any new facililty does, there's a few little things we're going to have to work out, but we had groups as large as 1,200 people in there, and it worked extremely well. We had other groups through, and the turn-around from day-to-day, most weekends we had two or three events there. It worked very well."

Siemens noted staff are now reviewing with user groups from over the past several weeks where there may be opportunities to enhance the facility and its services even further.    

"The very fact we're finally able to fully open that facility, without restrictions, and be able to invite the community down to see it, and to have a hockey game going on and a dinner going on at that the same time, and have meetings going in the meeting rooms, it's really been good to see."

Siemens added the D.A. Loewen Electric indoor walking track, in particular, has experienced a significant increase in use recently, with the arrival of colder weather.