Thompson really lived up to its name as the “Wolf Capital of the World” on Thursday, Sept. 21, when 2,033 residents descended on the Red Sangster Ball Field to break the Guinness World Record for group wolf howling.
Since the previous record stood at 803 people, set by the people of Niagara Falls back in July, the organizers behind this event were only expecting around 800 to 1,000 people to show up.
However, by mid-afternoon it became clear to everyone involved that they had severely underestimated the public’s interest.
“We were totally overwhelmed, as you could imagine,” said Volker Beckmann, who helped put this event together as part of the ongoing AuroraFest 150 festival. “A bus came from Nelson House, daycare centres showed up, and then, of course, there’s the public itself.”
Thursday’s event also saw big participation from local teachers and students from all six elementary schools and R.D Parker Collegiate high school.
While the event officially started around 1:30 p.m., organizers weren’t able to corral all the participants into the final staging area until a little after 3 p.m. Despite the long wait time, the warm weather was ideal for this kind of event, especially considering the local climate was plagued by rainy and cold conditions in the days leading up to Sept. 21.
Once everyone arrived at the final destination they were directed by wildlife filmmaker Matt Paproski, who told the crowd of over 2,000 people to arrange themselves in the shape of wolf and howl as loud as they could for a full minute.
After all the entry tickets were counted up, Beckmann announced on his Facebook page later that day that the total number of participants evened out to 2,033 people. However, he suspects that the real number could be as high as 2,300, since they eventually ran out of tickets to give out.
While Thursday’s event more than doubled the previous group howling record, Beckmann said they still need confirmation from Guinness before Thompson can be entered into the official record books.
“We’ve got to send in all the evidence,” he said. “All the signed statements, all the tickets, and all the video, so they say it takes two to three weeks to get confirmation.”
In the meantime, Beckmann said he and his fellow AuroraFest organizers are more than happy to drink in the outside media attention from the likes of CTV and CBC, especially if it turns into more tourism dollars down the road.
“That’s why we’re the ‘Wolf Capital of the World’ and now people begin to realize it,” he said. “Other media now want to know more information about the wolf conference happening next month and who the speakers are, so they’ll be fallout in a good way as we move into the next year.”
