Harvest organizers offer refunds, appeal for donations after storm cancellations

Harvest Music Festival organizers are offering refunds until Oct. 6 to people who had tickets to last Saturday's cancelled shows, but they're also calling on fans of the annual Fredericton festival to donate money to help recoup their losses.

"When you cancel a day like this in the middle of the festival on your biggest day ... it's going to come with some pretty significant costs and we've been adding those up all week," said Brent Staeben, Harvest's director of music programming.

"But at the same time, we understand of course too that we have a lot of customers who missed shows that we couldn't present last week and so we wanted to be sure we took care of everybody."

Harvest organizers cancelled last Saturday's shows ahead of post-tropical storm Lee making landfall in New Brunswick Saturday morning.

The storm felled trees and dumped 121 millimetres of rain on the provincial capital, while knocking out power to as many as 88,000 N.B. Power customers at its peak.

Staeben said refunds can only be honoured for the original ticket purchasers, meaning second-hand buyers could be out of luck.

But just because ticket purchasers can get refunds, Staeben said Harvest organizers are hoping they don't take them.

He said he's appealing to those eligible for refunds to forego them, allowing the non-profit organization that hosts the festival to reinvest that money back into next year's event.

He said ticket holders will be able to contribute by either getting refunded just a portion of their ticket price or by foregoing their entire refund.

He said even people who didn't have tickets for last Saturday can donate money if they want to help the organization recoup their losses.

"We've spent, truthfully, 30 years putting ourselves on very sustainable footing ... and so now we find ourselves in a position of needing some help. It's not a position we're particularly comfortable to be in, but it's one we find ourselves in due to the circumstances," Staeben said.

"And so now, first and foremost, today with these refunds, we're turning to our customers — and I think we're going to be turning to insurance, other funders, government, sponsors, the business community — to really help us re-establish some footing and foundation so that we can begin to plan and grow."

Staeben said organizers are beginning to plan for next year's shows, but that could be a challenge now that the "nest egg" it relies on to book musical acts is gone.