WILD Winter Festival of Lights

Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue is excited to bring you the 3rd Annual WILD Winter Festival of Lights! Last year’s event was a great success, allowing us to donate over $50,000 to charities in need. Thank you to our guests, and our sponsors who made this possible.

The 2022 Wild Winter Festival of Lights will be raising funds for JumpStart Canada as well as J.A.G Village!

...until the lights come on!

What is the WILD Winter Festival of Lights?

Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue’s annual WILD Winter Festival of Lights is your new holiday tradition; it’s a drive-through experience and a feast for your eyes, taking you through a magical avenue of dazzling holiday light displays!

Local businesses, community organizers, farmers & families pour their hearts into this special event in support of local charities. In 2021 we selected The Super Sophia Project, Rays of Sunshine Everywhere (ROSE), JumpStart Canada, Olivia’s Elves, local food banks & more. We also helped 2 families in need of support. In total we were able to raise over $50,000 to give back to our community in addition to collecting over 10,000 lbs of non-perishable food items for local food banks!

We are excited to once again sprinkle holiday cheer throughout Durham Region.

In 2021, the WILD Winter Festival of Lights was the recipient of a Provincial Grant, which meant an even bigger and better festival! A HUGE Thank-You to the Province of Ontario!

We have been awarded 2 Readers’ Choice Awards in 2021!
Best Local Event & Best Local Festival — Thank You!

This year, the WILD Winter Festival of Lights was able to donate to many different charities, including Canadian Tire Jumpstart.

We were so excited to be able to meet with Eric of the Durham Chapter to donate $20,000. Jumpstart charities ensure all children have an opportunity to participate in sports.

Children are our planet’s future, let’s ensure they have every opportunity available to them.

The WILD Winter Festival of Lights is excited to be returning to Canadian Motorsport Park for 2022!

Come see us at:

⇒ Canadian Tire Motorsport Park! ⇐

Festival Dates: Friday, December 9th – 18th, 2022

Times Available: 5:00pm – 9:00pm

Style: Drive-Through, Ticketed Event

A fun and COVID-safe way to
enjoy the spirit of the holidays,
all while helping our community!

Our History

In December of 2020, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue organized and executed the first drive-through “WILD Winter Festival of Lights”, held at the Orono Fairgrounds. It was more of a success than we could have imagined.

The goal of this event was to spread holiday cheer when so many Holiday events had been canceled. All Santa Claus parades were canceled, the local tractor parade couldn’t run, most malls had even removed their “letters to Santa” boxes! The WILD Winter Festival of Lights not only brightened our communities’ spirits but also was able to fundraise for Durham Region’s only wildlife hospital, St. Joseph’s Food Bank, Clarington East Food Bank, St. Vincent de Paul and other community organizations and local families that had been extremely affected by COVID-19.

Visit our website to find out more about Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue!

In a mere 4 weeks, Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue and their crew of family & volunteers solely designed, constructed and executed a 3 day, drive-through Festival of Lights. It consisted of 50 community displays, including 2 Monster Trucks, Boyle Excavating, Bob’s Towing, and Cardan Construction, and even a family-owned Child Grief Center.

Our festival of lights decorated the Orono Fair Grounds with over 500,000 lights, 75 inflatables, 50 displays, and of course, holiday music! Santa even made an appearance with Canada Post, collecting letters from children. We were even lucky enough to have 501, a Disney-recognized Star Wars unit come out and have Storm Troopers march through the cars!

Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue held free workshops for families in the community to come to the wildlife center and build wooden pallet Christmas trees and decorate them. The 60 Christmas Tree-shaped wooden pallets were donated to us from Bowmanville Wood Products. These same trees made up a display called the WILD forest in which we illuminated all of the trees for the community to enjoy. At the end of the festival, the families were able to bring these trees home!

Over the course of the 3 evenings (5:00-9:30 pm), over 20,000 people braved the downpour of rain and flooded the Orono fairgrounds to witness the community come together and celebrate the holiday season. The display itself took about 30 minutes to experience.

During this time, Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue’s volunteers were able to collect over 300 new and gently used snowsuits for children, winter clothing for the homeless, toys for families who could not afford gifts, 10,000 non-perishable food items (which allowed us to fill up the 2 local food banks) and raised over $5,000 for a family who had lost everything in a house fire just a few weeks prior to the event.

The WILD Winter Festival of Lights was made possible by the over 250 volunteers who donated their time to help check guests in, wave to the attendees, collect, sort and deliver all donations just in time for Christmas.

Would you like to volunteer at this year’s Festival of Lights?

Visit the Join the Festival page to apply now!