For the past nine years, the art of exterior illumination is at its finest during Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden’s annual Winter Lights Festival, which starts Friday.
Marketing and Events Manager Eric Granson says this year’s theme is once again the four seasons. “But we’re enhancing it this year with more themed lights and activities. Overall, just a great place to keep that family tradition alive.”
Winter Lights Festival preparations begin right after Halloween, Granson notes. “We go right from Halloween to Winter Lights Festival prep. We take all the lights out and start hanging lights.”
Last year, the festival reached a new attendance record, adds Granson. “Our previous record was in 2022/2023. We had 29,673 people during that year. Last year, we crushed it and reached 35,640. That’s our new record.”
Granson’s main focus last year was to increase the festival’s visibility in outside cities, including Medicine Hat, Red Deer and Edmonton.
“We get a lot of people from Calgary and surrounding area, so I wanted to increase this world attraction to people who may not know it exists,” says Granson. “We also tried to fill as many activities during the festival as we could like fun days to attend or unique things like choir performances and free horse and wagon rides. Those are things we did to enhance it last year.”
This year, according to Granson, the festival will continue with the festival’s previous enhancements, but guests also seem to enjoy the theme of the four seasons, which also expands the Japanese Garden’s branding. “Each section is broken off into the four seasons, so spring, summer, fall and winter.”
“The spring section is going to have all those beautiful parasols with the lights illuminating through them and it will be more feminine. It’s going to have the pink and purple colour lights. The summer section is going to be the firecracker lights to simulate Canada Day. The green simulates summer. The fall, you’re going to have nice oranges and red colours to simulate the falling of the trees and there’s a light tunnel. In the winter section, the colours are going to be white and blue to simulate that cold and winter. We have Mount Fuji, which we always have and the little igloos,” Granson describes. “This year, we added tiny little Japanese lanterns, which were locally made by one of our board members. Those are going to be illuminated through the area to add more of those features.”
There will also be an enhanced kids’ zone featuring light up corn hole and the Lite Brite returns. “All those fun things,” adds Granson.
The festival runs from this Friday until Feb. 28 from 5-9 p.m. In December, the Winter Lights Festival is open Wednesdays to Sunday and in January and February Nikka Yuko is only open Thursdays to Saturdays.
For more information or to purchase tickets visit online at nikkayuko.com.
