{"id":308692,"date":"2025-11-26T19:10:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T19:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/308692\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T19:10:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T19:10:21","slug":"honda-celebration-of-light-cancelled-indefinitely-due-to-funding-issues-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/308692\/","title":{"rendered":"Honda Celebration of Light cancelled indefinitely due to funding issues &#8211; BC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tDescrease article font size<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tIncrease article font size<\/p>\n<p>Organizers for the popular <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/honda-celebration-of-light\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Honda Celebration of Light<\/a> say the event has been cancelled indefinitely due to funding issues.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763808739_201_70c8fc80.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The event is held in Vancouver\u2019s English Bay every summer and consists of fireworks shows with teams from around the world competing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter many months of outreach to governments and the business community, the Vancouver Fireworks Festival Society (VFFS) has made the difficult decision to cancel the Honda Celebration of Light indefinitely,\u201d the organization said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The festival has faced challenges due to rising production costs, the elimination of federal funding, a reduction in provincial support and declining private sector investment, organizers said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have had a reduction of government funding at both levels, both provincially and federally. We lost federal funding altogether this year, and our provincial funding has been cut by 65 per cent going into next year, so combined, those two equal a $650,000 swing in government support for the event,\u201d executive producer Paul Runnals <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11304585\/cultural-event-funding-fireworks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">said in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Runnals argued the event draws hundreds of thousands of people to the region, contributing $4 million to economic activity every year.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-video__image\" alt=\"Click to play video: 'Increased security for Vancouver fireworks festival'\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WEb_6P_CELEBRATION_OF_LIGHT_OM01EV2O.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   data-\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2:59<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIncreased security for Vancouver fireworks festival\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\tTrending Now\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11540944\/polar-vortex-early-winter-canada\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764184220_404_Canada-snowstorm.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tPolar vortex set to bring \u2018harsh early start to winter\u2019 across Canada\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11541746\/canadian-potash-company-build-terminal-us-not-bc\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764184220_863_SET-GFX-NUTRIEN-TOWER.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tCanadian potash company Nutrien to build terminal in U.S. and not B.C.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor 33 years, this event has been a cornerstone of Vancouver\u2019s summer \u2014 a shared experience<br \/>that brought families, friends, and visitors together from across the province and around the<br \/>world,\u201d Michael McKnight, co-chair of VFFS said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763808740_130_national.jpg\" alt=\"Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tGet daily National news<\/p>\n<p>Get the day&#8217;s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEnding that tradition is incredibly painful, but we simply can\u2019t continue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Organizers said they have exhausted every option to keep the festival going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur hope is that by being transparent about the financial realities, that governments and partners might step up to create a long-term solution that allows the Honda Celebration of Light to return stronger and more sustainable at some point in the future,\u201d Runnals said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t&amp;copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size Organizers for the popular Honda Celebration of Light say the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,138004,43,138005,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-308692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-celebration-of-light","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-honda-celebration-of-light","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}