Couple opens doors to culture

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This article was published 18/07/2016 (3653 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dan Bielak’s passion for Folklorama is palpable.

“I am struck every year how (the festival) manages to point out all we have in common,” Bielak said. “It highlights and celebrates the unique and colourful points of our community’s cultural mosaic.”

Bielak has volunteered for the annual festival, which celebrates global culture through live entertainment and authentic ethnic cuisine at 40 pavilions throughout the city, for the past 17 years. His wife, Ruth Parnetta, has volunteered for the past seven.

The West End couple serve as guides on the festival’s VIP tours, which offer participants the opportunity to travel on an air-conditioned bus to two or three pavilions. They can also bypass lineups and enjoy the delicious food and world-class entertainment.

Parnetta said she enjoys meeting people who are attending Folklorama for the first time.

“Seeing it through their eyes makes it new and fresh,” she said.

Bielak said being tour guides puts him and his wife in a unique position.

“We get to share and facilitate (the guests’) discovery and their first experiences of the cultural displays and wonders that are in each pavilion,” he said.

You never know who you’re going to meet at Folklorama. Two years ago, Bielak met Canadian hockey player Jocelyne Larocque, whose father was driving the tour bus Bielak was guiding.

Larocque was carrying the gold medal she won earlier that year at the Sochi Olympics as part of the women’s national team.

Bielak will never forget the moment Larocque handed him her gold medal.

“I’d never seen in person a gold medal, and then she handed it to me to show me,” said Bielak. He said he remembered thinking if it weren’t for being a Folklorama volunteer, he wouldn’t have had the experience.

“It was surreal.”

For Parnetta, who grew up in Birtle, 300 kilometres west of Winnipeg, one of the biggest highlights of last year’s festival was bumping into an old friend from elementary school she had not seen in 30 years.

“It just reinforces that Winnipeg is this small town where we all know each other and are sharing these experiences together,” Parnetta said.

Debra Zoerb, executive director of Folklorama, said the importance of volunteers to the festival’s success cannot be overstated.

“When (people) visit the pavilions, everyone they encounter, from the people taking their tickets, to the people serving their food, to the people putting on the shows, are all volunteers,” Zoerb said. “It just would not happen if it were not for them.”

Bielak and Parnetta are looking forward to this year’s festival, which starts July 31.

If you see them on a tour and ask them what their favourite pavilion is, don’t expect them to pick just one.

“You can always find something great at every pavilion,” Parnetta said.

“They all have their own bit of magic,” Bielak added.

If you know a special volunteer, please contact

aaron.epp@gmail.com.