THUNDER BAY — For the first time in nearly two years, the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium will welcome performers to its stage starting in January 2022.
Tickets are on sale for about half a dozen events between January and May, using a new online-only ticketing service.
The Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra gave the last live performance at the auditorium on Mar. 12, 2020, before COVID-19 shut things down everywhere.
In an interview Monday, General Manager Bob Halvorsen recalled that three sold-out shows were scheduled to follow the symphony.
"Simon and Garfunkel was on the Friday night. We were in the building here at 11 o'clock in the morning, thinking everything was going to be fine. The health unit called, and everything went for a crap, to be blunt," he said.
Halvorsen said that judging from early ticket sales, it may take some time for attendance to ramp up when shows resume in the New Year.
"Tickets are slow...I'm going to say in all honesty that things are not what they were pre-pandemic. It's a lot different, for the time being anyway."
He noted that COVID-19 remains top of mind for many people not necessarily because of what's happening in Thunder Bay, but because of worries about what's going on elsewhere.
"This pandemic is still burning. It may not be in Thunder Bay but it's in Sudbury. It may not be in Canada but it's coming back in Europe...The older you are, the more you might be thinking about that."
Halvorsen said there's also ongoing uncertainty over what COVID-19 protocols might still be required in 2022.
"Masking is still in place, but then you hear the premier [Doug Ford] saying that by March everything is going to be fine, and it's going to be out the window. Double-vaccination is another thing that's on us right now. We have to check for that. But then you hear the premier saying that by March, that's all gone too."
The changeability of the situation, he said, makes it more challenging to plan events, but "a lot of people are in the same boat. It's not specific to us."
The auditorium has switched to a contactless, online-only ticketing platform
Ticket-purchasers will notice that the TBCA has a new partner – Ticketmaster.
Halvorsen said the five-year contract with the previous provider expired last year, coincidental with the onset of the pandemic.
"We decided in the course of the negotiations that we would try something new. So that's why we ended up with Ticketmaster."
He said the former service provider wanted to increase its prices substantially, and had been unable to offer ticketing directly to customers' smartphones.
Ironically, Halvorsen said, "Contactless tickets are [now] the way to go. It just turned out we were ahead of the curve on this a little bit."
He said the service charges customers pay through Ticketmaster are exactly the same as they paid through the previous provider.
"It's just a matter of the division of where the money goes. Some of it goes to Ticketmaster, and we get to keep some. So our revenue from handling charges has gone down a little bit, but to offset that our capital and operating costs have dramatically decreased from the previous platform, so there's a net saving to the auditorium."
Under the new ticketing platform, the auditorium will only keep its box office open for one hour before every show.
That will allow individuals who prefer not to have their ticket scanned at the door on their smartphone to present a receipt printed at home instead.
When they visit the box office just prior to showtime, that receipt will then enable them to obtain a voucher with a scannable code.
Halvorsen said he regrets that this will cause inconvenience for people without a computer.
"We're not tryng to put it on the backs of our patrons. It's just the way of the future," he said, adding that under the previous system it cost the TBCA about $15,000 a year to print tickets and put them into envelopes.
