Volunteer Opportunities

One of the oldest activities of the Downtown Wallaceburg BIA is designing our downtown horticulture. Every year we maintain planters, hanging baskets, and gardens throughout the core. One of the latest gardens we designed and installed is the long garden along the parking lot where the Farmer’s Market is held. These gardens soften the concrete downtown and make the space more inviting. Designing and maintaining these gardens is a lot of work and there is more we believe we can do. If you’ve got a green thumb or an eye for design, we would love to have you on board. We started putting together a proper garden committee before Covid and would like to rebuild this group now. Are you ready to help us make Wallaceburg more beautiful?

The Wallaceburg Farmer’s Market has become a staple of summer Saturday mornings. The Farmer’s Market Committee has worked hard to bring fresh fruit, vegetables, and other goodies downtown. Our vendors grow and produce their own products and the BIA is committed to maintaining the market as a source of connection between local farmers and the public. Are you passionate about locally grown food and locally made products? Come and grow Wallaceburg with us.

The Christmas open house has taken on many forms over the years. This annual event is meant to showcase our downtown merchants and give them an opportunity to jump start Christmas sales. It is also a thank you from the BIA to the town of Wallaceburg. We have often paid for unique activities during the open house which we believe will appeal to families. Several popular attractions have been the roaming downtown Santa, sleigh rides, and reindeer petting. We are moving back to the traditional Thursday evening event for 2023. It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Help us deck the halls.

This is the BIA’s newest committee. The BIA has always supplied Christmas decorations for the downtown. Wreaths, lights, artwork, and planters have all made the downtown more festive. There was always a limit to how much the merchants could afford to do on their own. In February of 2023, we reached out to the larger community to ask for help designing, fundraising, and installing new decorations. Some amazing people stepped up and the BIA is so thankful! They have been meeting every two weeks since March and have some amazing new lit structures on the way this year. The committee has projected a 5-year plan to revitalize the decorations and they are well on their way thanks to some generous donations. If you are passionate about seeing a river of lights wash through the downtown core each winter, come and join this exciting new committee. They would love to have you.

There is another, older river which washes through Wallaceburg. The Sydenham is an underutilized feature which we would like to expand. We want residents and visitors to appreciate this historic waterway and its ecological significance with amazing flora and fauna. How better than exploring the river by boat, kayak, or paddle board? We would like to transform the river into a hub of recreation and exploration. This project launched in 2022, and 2023 was our first full kayak rental season, but the committee is still growing and has some amazing plans for the future. Wallaceburg residents grew up next to the water. Help us make the most of it.

This committee is complimentary to Whimsies. It is still in the planning phase and likely will be for a while. The goal of this committee is to come up with a plan to beautify and upgrade our downtown harbour and boardwalk. We would love to see a continuous boardwalk loop around the river basin. We want to see a bustling harbour return to downtown Wallaceburg. This will likely be our most ambitious project and take the most time. Are you up to the challenge?

The Christmas open house is just one event we’ve held over the years. Previously, the BIA hosted the Dragonboat Festival, to correspond with the Sydenham Challenge, and Grand Olde Days. We don’t currently have any new events planned, but maybe you want to change that. Amazing events are a sign of a vibrant and thriving community.

Wallaceburg needs to promote itself. We need to be heard above Chatham. We need to show Ontario that we have a strong identity, and are worth the trip from other communities. We need to demonstrate that we are committed to making our town the best it can be. If you enjoy creating social media post, videos, stories, or are a person with a passion for graphic design, we need you! Let’s work together, not just to build the BIA brand, but the Wallaceburg brand.

There are many holes in downtown Wallaceburg’s retail space. The BIA has worked with startups here in townand also worked to attract companies from out of town. We would like to bring our focus back to attracting new businesses to the downtown core to fill in the gaps. How can you help us with this?

The goal of the BIA is straight forward. We want our downtown to be bustling and thriving. We want our downtown to be comfortable and inviting. We want our downtown to be a place of play and work. This may be straight forward, but it is anything but easy. We intend to create a long-term plan. We have already built some scaffolding towards this goalbut need to decide on concrete steps to move forward. What makes Wallaceburg a community? What brings people to Wallaceburg instead of Chatham, Sarnia, Windsor, London, and Toronto? What can we do to make Wallaceburg better than anywhere else? The people of Wallaceburg have always had big hearts. Come help us grow Wallaceburg’s heart.

The Wallaceburg BIA is open to new ideas, activities, and events. If you’ve had a long gestating project in mind, submit your idea to us with a review of the project with no less than 500 words. The more details, the better. If the idea fits within our budget and our long-term plan, we would be happy to work with you in a new and exciting direction.