The Winnipeg in 2023 Committee today announced their bid for the 81st World Science Fiction Convention. The bid has filed the required papers with the DisCon III committee inviting the Worldcon to return to Winnipeg for the first time since 1994.
The Winnipeg in 2023 committee proposes to host the Worldcon at the RBC Convention Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada from August 24-28, 2023. The RBC Convention Center has doubled in size since it hosted the 52nd Worldcon in 1994, and is now Canada’s fourth largest convention center.
The bid committee is headed by Terry Fong, an experienced Worldcon convention organizer, and includes John Mansfield, the chair of the last Worldcon in Winnipeg, as a senior advisor. Its 23 members are experienced convention organizers, including past Worldcon and World Fantasy Convention chairs and local convention runners.
The Winnipeg in 2023 bid is a committee of Cansmof, a Canadian not-for-profit corporation that specializes in running and sponsoring fannish events in Canada. The bid is endorsed by WINSFA Inc., which oversees KeyCon, an annual science fiction convention that has been held in Winnipeg since 1984 over the Victoria Day weekend each year. Although the 2020 and 2021 events are virtual for safety reasons, the 2022 KeyCon is planning an in person event again. More information about KeyCon is available at Keycon.org.
This bid was developed with the support of Tourism Winnipeg. The last Worldcon in Winnipeg generated an estimated Canadian $9M in economic activity and drew nearly 4000 attendees from around the world. The last Canadian Worldcon in Montreal in 2009 had similar numbers..
The Winnipeg bid is competing with Chengdu, Sichuan, China and Memphis, Tennessee to host the 2023 Worldcon
Copies of their submissions to Site Selection can be downloaded here.
More information about the Winnipeg bid is available from the committee’s website, winnipegin2023.ca. Direct queries for additional information can be sent to [email protected].
The chair may be directly contacted at [email protected].
Social Media:
- Twitter: @WinnipegIn23)
- Facebook: Winnipeg in 23
Organization of the Bid
- Chair: Terry Fong
- Vice-Chair: Robbie Bourget, Linda Ross Mansfield
- Graphics: Phynix Caskey
- Social Media: Marah Searle-Kovacevic
- Discord: CarynLiz Bleakley-Fauerbach (Dundee,Scotland)
Other bid committee members:
- Rebecca Downey (Montreal, QC, Canada)
- Bruce Farr (Santa Rosa, CA, USA)
- Neyir Cenk Gökçe (Ottawa, ON, Canada)
- Níamh Kearney (Dublin, Ireland)
- Diane Lacey (Toronto, ON, Canada)
- Ruth Lichtwardt (Lawrence, KS, USA)
- John Mansfield (Winnipeg, MB, Canada)
- Sheena Morrison-Sousa (Winnipeg, MB, Canada)
- Maree Pavletich (Auckland, New Zealand)
- Andrea Senchy (Woodland Park, NJ, USA)
- Jannie Shea (Tulsa, OK, USA)
- Chuck Shimada (Huntington Beach, CA, USA)
- Albert Sousa (Winnipeg, MB, Canada)
- Christine Taylor-Butler (Kansas City)
[Based on a press release.]
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HOORAY! I have the potential to attend a WorldCon without having to pay for air fare and hotel accomodations!
I may have missed an announcement that DisCon III had re-opened site selection filing (closed on 26 February), as Kevin Standlee has urged on WSFS constitutional grounds — the deadline is supposed to be 180 days before the current Worldcon, i.e. in June. Worldcon.org lists this bid but implies that because of the filing date it won’t appear on the ballot and can win only as a write-in. Which seems unfair.
http://www.worldcon.org/worldcon-bids/
Sounds good. I’m sure the Memphis people are lovely and all, but three find in the same but of the same country in a row is too parochial.
Great news! The 1994 Winnipeg Worldcon was excellent and Winnipeg is lovely in August. I’ve attended many KeyCons, and it’s always very well run.
@David Langford:
As the person who does most of the maintenance on worldcon.org, I have to go with what is currently the policy of the administering Worldcon, no matter how much I personally disagree with it and think that is contrary to the WSFS constitution. Should DC change their policy, I will of course update worldcon.org accordingly. I also have to work harder to try and stay impartial in that role, as I’m a “double agent” — I’m on both the Memphis and Winnipeg bid committees as their WSFS advisor, and both bids have asked me to run their WSFS division should they win.
I posted the Winnipeg filing to Worldcon.org once the press release went out, because it was then public information. I knew it was coming for a few days now as I was involved in discussions with CanSMOF (Winnipeg’s parent corporation) and the Memphis bid leadership.
While I’m a director of CanSMOF, I recused myself from voting on Worldcon bid decisions due to my previously-stated overlapping roles, including being Parliamentarian of this year’s WSFS Business Meeting. Due to potential perceptions of bias in any official advice I might give the presiding officer should there be anything other than a pro forma announcement of results at the Site Selection Business Meeting, I had already (before the Winnipeg bid surfaced) advised the 2021 Business Meeting that I would step off the head table at the start of the Site Selection Meeting and recuse myself from any site selection business this year.
Just presupposed at the Polar Bear level since I usually do Friend level and this seems to be the closest to the normal amount I pay. PayPal makes paying in CA$ easy for folks from the USA.
@Kevin Standlee: Thanks for spelling it out. I thought that might be the situation. The wording of the press release — “The bid has filed the required papers with the DisCon III committee” — set me wondering about DisCon III’s response to the filing, or attempted filing. No doubt we will hear more of this.
Mmmm. Mansfield.
Well, he’s gotten a bit better over the years, I guess.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s good at the nuts and bolts of con running.
He’s also been one of the people who kind of needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the idea that codes of conduct were needed and yes, should be applied to extant “missing stairs”, and that appealing to younger crowds, inclusion, and diversity were to be actively sought, not things that would just happen if you didn’t intentionally exclude people. It looks like this bid has actively made moves to add people who will focus on those things, so that’s a good start.
I am interested but suspect this bid has too many prevailing headwinds to succeed.
Well, in this context, I’m glad to see another choice. I have never been to Winnipeg or farther east in Canada then Calgary, so that would be a plus.
I have no desire to go to Tennessee or China. I’ll happily support Winnipeg.
A small city in the middle of nowhere? I think I would have a hard time combining it with an ordinary vacation in the area, so I’d most likely pass. Perhaps if combined with some hiking…
Tourism Winnipeg lists many of the things to do in the Winnipeg area. Should Winnipeg win, I hope to take the train trip to Churchill after the convention, but of course Lisa and I are train enthusiasts.
Were, somehow, Winnipeg to win (my money, expectations and energies are on Memphis), I would possibly head west to the Rockies. Or even just explore around the lake.
That train trip idea does sound neat, though, Kevin.
Hampus Eckermann:- Sir, you insult me and my city!
Our city isn’t the prettiest (though our ugliest season is after the snow has melted and left detritus and before things really get green, so I might be feeling extra apologetic — and Worldcon handily avoids that), and flatlands aren’t the best for hiking if it’s vistas you want.
But Fort Whyte and Assiniboine Park/Forest are both pleasant if you want an idea what prairie nature looks like without leaving the city, the Forks is actually pretty, and we have one of the largest numbers of restaurants per capita. We have an arts scene disproportionately big for our size, though I can’t predict specifics for what’s on in 2023.
Paul: You do know the Rockies are a 15 hour drive away?
@Lenora. [glibly] Yeah, so, what’s your point? 😉 {/glibly}
I have been looking to try and get back to the Canadian Rockies, my only trip there being 14 years ago. A 15 hour drive is less than the 23 hours from here…Winnipeg would bootstrap me, in effect, a third of the way there.
But… I would likely be more rational in the end and explore around the Lake.
personally I have heard legends of the 1994 worldcon; I am very sorry to have missed it. Winnipeg has an extremely well-regarded hammam in a Canadian railroad hotel that’s on my bucket list, so my support of Winnipeg’s bid is cemented.
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Lenora Rose: I was thinking if there were some hiking trails within some hours from the city where one could spend a week or so walking.
Maybe into the Whiteshell for hiking (There are areas of cabins and areas that are pretty much left alone so you can probably strike the balance you want.) Or up far enough into the interlake. Both of those tend towards rocks and trees and trees and rocks (and waterrrr) instead of flatland.
And for the vast majority of you for whom that last is too obscure:
Rocks and Trees
Probably of interest only to me, but the highest point in Winnipeg is this 241m point west of the urbanized area of the city.