Our History

YCMF/KFPA HISTORY

Mere months after the onset of the Great Depression, a performing arts enterprise was born to Kamloops that would play a pivotal role in the development of the city’s thriving arts community.

On February 28, 1930, a meeting was held to discuss the formation of a musical festival Kamloops could call its own. Fifty citizens representing nearly every society and association in Kamloops squeezed into the city’s council chambers, and three hours later, a musical festival association had been formed.

Despite a severely depressed economy (the city’s unemployment rate was 37 per cent), organizers had little difficulty securing the $820 required to host the 1931 festival through a membership drive, music recitals and card parties in local cafes. Operating as the Yale Cariboo Musical Festival, a two-day festival was held in 1931 in the city’s premiere Elks Hall and adjudicated by Province Newspaper music critic – Rhynd Jamieson.

The festival’s first official festival, the largest in BC at the time, spanned three-days and was held on the Victoria Day weekend in 1933, a year after the festival became a society under the name of Yale Cariboo Musical Festival. It featured 900 competitors – one-sixth of the city’s population. Due to the generosity of private citizens, benevolent institutions and other organizations, a medal, cup or shield was offered in each of the festival’s 63 classes. In recognition of the popularity and educational value of the festival, the school board authorized a school holiday for the event and offered the use of the school’s auditorium as the festival’s venue.

YCMF continued to grow in size and popularity until 1938 when all attention shifted to war efforts. Placed in hibernation in 1938, the festival lay dormant for a decade until it was revived by the Local Council of Women of Kamloops in 1948.

Since its establishment, festival organizers have stayed true to the core values of adaptability, inclusivity, learning and growth and fiscal prudence. As society’s artistic tastes evolved, so too did festival classes. In addition to dance and public speaking, classes were offered in bagpipes, accordion, harmonica, highland dancing, electric guitar and harp. Financial constraints thwarted the 1962 festival, but from 1963 onward, the Kamloops festival has steadily grown, with as many as 2,000 entries (6,000 participants) from throughout the province.

In 1982, the same year the festival hosted the BC Festival of the Arts, the YCMF name was changed to the Kamloops Festival of the Performing Arts to more accurately reflect its non-musical categories.

During its long-standing history the festival has grown from a one-day affair to a three-week extravaganza. More than 45,000 amateur performers have stepped onto the local stage to showcase and practise their craft, with many of the same performers moving on to pursue careers as educators, musicians, dancers and actors on the provincial, national and international stage.

The YCMF/KFPA survived the great depression, a world war, the 1948 flood and a global pandemic not by luck, but rather by virtue of the unstinting patronage of the public and a stalwart team of volunteers wholly dedicated to the cultivation of a love and appreciation of the performance arts.