The arts world is awakening here in the ‘Burg.

No words are necessary to describe how devastating COVID-19 was to every organization, including our Wallaceburg and District Council for the Arts.

Our skeletal crew struggled to keep the organization afloat from several perspectives, but we persevered.

With no events allowed to be staged, we largely utilized the time to get our house in order. Joni Yazbeck tackled one of the largest tasks, and that was getting our organization incorporated. Connected to our incorporation has been the mad dash that every not-for-profit organization in Ontario has been engaged in to comply with the new ONCA (Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act) regulations by Oct. 19 of this year.

I can honestly say that I cannot think of a better way to torture me than to force me to sit in on meetings dealing with constitution and regulation amendments. Thank goodness one of our Arts Council directors, Rebecca Rysoever, has led the charge in this difficult task, digging into details in helping bring our Arts Council into compliance with new ONCA regulations.

Now that that task is nearing completion and COVID is in the rearview mirror, the Arts Council is poised to take flight.

I’ve been on the board of directors for several decades now and we’ve always struggled to find people to serve, but things have really turned around recently.

Several new faces have volunteered to serve on our board of directors and instead of having the minimum number of directors as required by regulations, our board of directors is now close to a full slate.

With new faces comes new energy, new ideas and more help to share the load for any undertaking. This is exciting news for us.

Many ideas are being explored and things will start to happen soon.

One of the first events will be a return engagement of the Celtic........

© Sarnia Observer