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Our family - three kids, my husband and I - await the Polish Festival in Roncesvalles Village with great anticipation as we've been attending for the more than 10 years we've lived in the neighbourhood. Our children always look forward to the rides and the various sites to behold and my husband and I enjoy spending the time as a family supporting local businesses in our own neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, we have watched the festival change from the original Harvest Festival, complete with hay bales, petting zoo and wagon rides, to the Roncesvalles Festival which had very little in the way of cultural or child friendly activities, to now, finally the Polish Festival, ostensibly to celebrate the uniqueness of the Roncesvalles community. Unfortunately, all this change has resulted in a vastly different, less family-oriented festival, a mere closure of the street for all sorts of booths selling all sorts of items, very little of it Polish or even multi-cultural.

This year's Polish Festival had very little of the Polish culture except for the occasional group walking about in traditional dress and the beer and liquor tents sponsored by Polish vodka. There were no rides to the great disappointment of the children - only a few little bouncy castles for which parents were charged $2 for times ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes with no consistency. There was no place to get decent food except for one perogie tent with a huge line-up.

This is not a festival that brings the community together. I would suggest that the Roncesvalles BIA look to other models of more successful street festivals such as Taste of the Danforth, Taste of Little Italy, and so on. Have lots of events for the kids so they don't get bored and try to get their parents to leave to take them elsewhere. Have food tasting stations or booths with low prices and a variety of foods so that people can try the myriad of fabulous restaurants that Roncesvalles has to offer. People will return for a proper meal at other times in the year if they've had a good experience. Promote more local businesses as opposed to the people who attend festival after festival selling their same old cheap t-shirts, dvd's, and so on. There are so many things that could be done to help the festival while still protecting its Polish roots - have more traditional music as opposed to local rap guys, traditional dance lessons for people to try, cooking demonstrations, and so on.

The festival was poorly attended this year, I could tell just by being there. Yes, it was a rainy weekend but the competing Ukrainian Festival - another well-run and well-organized street festival - was the same weekend and they seemed to have far more attendees than we did. And that's a shame - a shame that people feel the need to get in their car and drive to a different street festival than the one that's just down the block from you.

I hope that the Roncesvalles BIA will take a good hard look at this year's festival and really think about how and why it used to be so much better and how to make it so again.

Jennifer Scott