Thank you to the House of Commons and our MP, Michelle Ferreri, for having me.
I have been the general manager here at Peterborough Musicfest for 12 years. We host 18 nights of music with free admission in our beautiful downtown, at a local four-acre park, every Wednesday and Saturday. We try to bring premier, diverse artists to town. We've been doing this for 36 years, starting in 1987.
Actually, I was a student driving a boat around for the first two years of the summer festival. I moved away for 30 years and have come back. I really enjoy what I do here for our community and how much the community relies on this festival year after year. It brings a lot of therapeutic.... During the pandemic we had to stop, and we are really appreciative that we were able to bring it back last year after 37 months away.
We did that thanks to funders. We are provided local sponsorships of upwards of $300,000. Then we get other funding through grants from the municipality, county and city, as well as provincial and federal, such as the Canada summer jobs grant, which we're here today to speak to.
I'm very proud of where we've come from. We move from three employees in the winter months to 15, because we set up and tear down every night at the park. We bring upwards of 10,000 people to Peterborough each night, which totals upwards of 120,000 for the entire summer. We're just really happy to get people back into our restaurants. They're spending money through the cottage area, renting Airbnbs, staying in our hotels over three nights and enjoying the cottage country that we offer throughout our region. We want to continue to do so.
I'm just really proud of where we've come from and how far we've increased the capacity and the genres of music. We've brought hip hop, we have local bands and we bring the likes of Big Wreck and Tom Cochrane. This year we had Little River Band. We're just really proud of how far we've come with free music. Normally, people are paying $100 to $150 a ticket to see this type of artist.
We just really want to thank you, as well, for promoting us and supporting us over the years. We've really relied on this grant. We watch the students that have been hired through this grant become new people. They always come back to me eight or 10 years later to say that it was the best summer they ever had. The odd time we'll have a student come back a couple of years in a row. We just know that we're putting them out into the world with growth in a large event experience, which they'll never see again.
It's an amazing experience, and I'm just so proud of where we've come with these Canada summer jobs students.
Thank you so much for having me today.