Nick Smith and his wife Judy have been spending the past 10 winters in Osoyoos as Snowbirds from Saskatchewan. They were very pleased with the recent breakfasts for Snowbirds that were held at the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort and Spa in Osoyoos. More than 600 Snowbirds attended the breakfasts over three days. (Keith Lacey photo)
Whenever you get a large group of people together from Saskatchewan, there is going to be music, good times and many people wearing green.
That was the case 10 days ago when Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort and Spa hosted three separate Snowbird Breakfast events over three days at the resort’s conference centre.
“We had over 200 people from Alberta for our first breakfast, more than 200 from Saskatchewan the following day and another 200 from Manitoba on the third day,” said Benedict Genaille, the food and beverage director at Spirit Ridge.
“The Snowbirds in our community have become very active and they’re looking to host events like this, so they approached us to see if we would be interested and we obviously were very interested.”
Spirit Ridge also hosted its inaugural Mardi Gras evening and had another big crowd of Snowbirds attending that event.
During the Snowbird Breakfast for those visiting town from Saskatchewan, participants not only ate a great breakfast, but a few were up dancing and singing as a band performed throughout the event.
Close to half of the 200 in attendance were proudly wearing the green colours of the Saskatchewan Roughriders as members of the “Green Nation” tend to do whenever they go anywhere in Canada.
Nick Smith from Regina has been a Snowbird in Osoyoos for the past 10 years.
After spending the first couple of years in local hotels and motels, he and his wife Judy have spent the past several years living in a recreational vehicle at the Nk’ Mip RV Campground on the shores of Osoyoos Lake, only steps away from Spirit Ridge resort.
While he has attended other events organized for the hundreds of Snowbirds who visit Osoyoos during the winter months, Smith said he was thrilled to participate in an event that brought together more than 200 residents of his beloved home province.
“To have all these people here from Saskatchewan is fantastic,” he said. “I honestly didn’t know there were this many people from our province coming to Osoyoos as Snowbirds.
“It has been a great event and I hope we get more things like this organized in town for Snowbirds.”
Unlike many Snowbirds who only come to Osoyoos for two, three or four months, Smith and his wife spend six months in our community as they come the first week in November and leave in early May to head back to Regina, said Smith.
The mild weather in Osoyoos during the winter months is what attracts most snowbirds and it’s no different for he and his wife, said Smith.
“We love being from Saskatchewan, but we’re obviously getting older and I just don’t want to have anything to do anymore with the bitter cold winters we get back home,” he said. “Some people complain about the lack of sunshine, but you can’t get much better than Osoyoos in the winter. I will take cloudy and warm over sunny and bitterly cold every single time.
“It’s the desert, the weather is fantastic and the people in this community really embrace having the Snowbirds come here for the winter, so it doesn’t get much better than that.”
Because he and his wife have spent six months in Osoyoos for almost a decade, they consider it to be “like a second home,” said Smith.
“We like it here so much that we’ve decided to finally start shopping around the area considering buying a place in town,” he said. “We’ve got to see if we can afford it, but we’re thinking about spending even more time here.”
The Nk’ Mip campground is packed with Snowbirds in the winter and the management there does a wonderful job arranging social events to keep them busy during the long winter months, he said.
Smith and his wife will continue returning to Osoyoos as Snowbirds for many years to come.
“As long as we’re in good health and I can drive the RV from Saskatchewan, we’ll keep coming back,” he said. “We love it here.”
Genaille said being able to host an event that attracted more than 600 visitors to Spirit Ridge in the middle of winter is very encouraging.
“We had to bring in a lot of our night staff because things got so busy, but they didn’t mind,” he said. “Feeding that many people for three straight days took some work, but we managed to pull it off and all of the Snowbirds really enjoyed themselves. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun.”
Spirit Ridge would be far quieter during the winter months if it were not for the Snowbirds who rent rooms at the resort and the staff there really appreciate their business and recognize how important they are to this town’s economic development, said Genaille.
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
