BELLEVUE — Two North Olympic Peninsula events took top honors at the Washington Festival & Events Association’s 2025 conference.
The Lower Elwha Canoe Paddle was named the Event of the Year in small markets while Lissy Andros, director of the Forever Twilight in Forks Festival, was named Event Organizer of the Year.
The 2025 Pacific Northwest Summit Award winners were presented at the WFEA Awards Dinner and Auction in the Regency Ballroom on Oct. 30 in Bellevue.
The Lower Elwha Tribe hosted the 2025 Paddle to the Elwha, the Intertribal Canoe Journey featuring traditional native canoes traveling from Washington and Canada to the Elwha River located just west of Port Angeles. The journey attracted 40,000 people, 109 canoes from 29 Washington and five Oregon tribes, representatives from Alaska and Idaho, and 26 Canadian nations for a five-day potlatch in a temporary city that fed 4,000 people per day.
Planning began five years before the event, said Frances Charles, chair of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, with 60 to 80 staff members and personnel from each tribal department involved.
Canoes landed on July 31 on the beach area at the Lower Elwha reservation west of Port Angeles. During landings, paddlers ask for permission to come onto the host’s land and are welcomed with ceremonial singing and drumming.
Until Aug. 5 there were potlaches — giveaways — meals and commemorations of special events. Attendance was more than expected, with all families helping out on housing visitors and the tribe having to make room for more vendors.
“A lot of the communities did not want to see it end,” Charles said during an interview following the WFEA conference. “It was overwhelming.”
The theme of the gathering was the demolition of the two Elwha River dams in 2011 and 2014 that freed the river to salmon migration.
“The salmon are coming back in numbers,” Charles said. “They’re coming back in abundance, but we still have a long way to go.”
Since the Elwha Dam and Glines Canyon Dam were removed, the mouth of the Elwha River, once a rocky moonscape, has been built up to about 100 acres of beach from the silt washing down the waterway that supports a lush seaside full of birds and fish.
During the event, some 300 volunteers, both local and international, helped out, Charles said.
“People came from all over — local businesses, members of the public, canoe families, all the summer youth programs,” she said.
She was especially heartened by the participation of both elders and young people. Educating and supporting youth is a major point of the annual paddle journeys of tribes in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Canada.
“The kids were the ones who did all the speaking in the Klallam language,” Charles said. “Some were very young kids. They had the ability to talk in Klallam and translate into English. It was really inspiring watching them.”
Canoe journeys give youth the opportunity to learn their heritage and cultural traditions, as well as to create traditional crafts.
“They experience the ties to other communities,” Charles said, “being able to share those stories with one another. It was really about the unity of it all.”
Behind the scenes were challenges. A diesel truck spill at Indian Creek, which feeds into the Elwha River, pulled observers from the tribe’s staff. A tsunami alert kept staff members manning phones 24/7 to monitor conditions for paddlers’ safety. And fears of immigration action meant that “a lot of relatives in Canada didn’t want to bring family members,” Charles said.
“All nations had concerns about how they were going to be picked up and sent off somewhere,” she said.
Staffers helped those crossing the international border with paperwork to ensure they would be safe.
All law enforcement agencies were involved and contributed to a smooth operation with no difficulties, she said.
“We were surprised and thankful” for the event, Charles said, “having the partnerships and volunteers, the opportunity to open our doors and share with others.
“We were humbled by the award given to us,” she said.
Forever Twilight
Andros, the Forks Chamber of Commerce executive director, has kept Twilight alive in her community with the Forever Twilight in Forks Festival, which has global appeal and draws international visitors.
All are fans of the Twilight Saga novels and movies based on a romance between a mortal, Isabel Swan, and a vampire, Edward Cullen. The fantasy is set in Forks.
Andros — a huge fan of Twilight who, “smitten by Twilight,” moved herself, her mother and 12 dogs to Forks in 2009 because of the phenomenon — also started the Forever Twilight in Forks Festival Collection of Costumes and other Memorabilia from the Twilight movies.
This past year, the festival brought in the author of the Twilight books, Stephenie Meyer, and actors from the movies, Kellan Lutz, Peter Facinelli and Erik Odom.
The award as Event Organizer of the Year in small markets was “a huge honor,” Andros said. “I’m very appreciative of it. I’m very grateful to accept it.”
She attributed the success of the festival to “a great team around me. We have five volunteers – six volunteers plus me – and others who come for weekend, about 10.”
The annual Forever Twilight Festival brought in about 2,000 visitors this year from Sept. 10-14. That’s in a town of about 3,500 people, with a larger surrounding area of some 6,400.
“It was our biggest to date,” Andros said.
A big draw was Meyer, the author of the Twilight novels, who signed books and was highlighted on Nightline and Good Morning America.
Tickets for the 2026 festival, from Sept. 10-13, already are on sale, with some 75 percent already sold. To buy tickets or for more information, see the Forks Chamber of Commerce website at https://forkswa.com.
The Forks Chamber of Commerce started the festival with Stephenie Meyer Day. It was run by another organization for a while before the chamber took it back in 2016 and rebranded it. In 2017, the Forever Twilight in Forks collection was opened.
“As a Twilight fan, I get to plan a party for 500 of our closest friends,” Andros said. “It’s so much fun to plan things and know people will enjoy them.”
The effects of Twilight don’t stop with the week in September that it is celebrated. Tourists come year-round.
“This year is the busiest we ever had,” Andros said.
During the height of Twilight popularity in 2019, the visitors to the Forks chamber numbered 73,000.
“This year, it’s already in the 80,000s,” Andros said. “It’s just been an amazing thing. The Twilight fans have been such a gift for us.”
Planning is non-stop, she said.
“We used to take a three-month break. This year, we wanted to keep the train moving, keep the excitement going, keep people excited about it.
“I love the fandom. It’s community.”
Another big winner from the North Olympic Peninsula was the Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts, which took the Grand Summit Award on the over $150,000 category, after winning awards in several categories.
Other award-winners from the North Olympic Peninsula were:
Brochure/Postcard/Direct Mail Piece — Over $150,000: Sequim Irrigation Festival.
Tickets & Invitations — Under $150,000: Red, Set, Go! from the Olympic Medical Center Foundation; Over $150,000: Harvest of Hope from the OMC Foundation.
Newspaper Tabloid — Under $150,000: Juan de Fuca Festival.
Website — Under $150,000: Run The Peninsula.
Television Program (Ad, PSA or YouTube Promotion Video) — Under $150,000: Red, Set, Go! from the OMC Foundation.
Mobile App — Under $150,000: Juan de Fuca Festival.
Social Media Page — Under $150,000: Run The Peninsula.
Sponsorship Proposal — Over $150,000: Festival of Trees from the OMC Foundation.
Multi-Agency Collaborative Program — Over $150,000: Port Angeles 2023-24 Winter Ice Village.
Community Outreach Program — Over $150,000: North Olympic Discovery Marathon.
Social Media Ad Campaign — Under $150,000: Juan de Fuca Festival.
Best Lifestyle Event — Under $150,000: Run The Peninsula.
Photo (Black & White or Color) — Under $150,000: Juan de Fuca Festival.
T-Shirt — Under $150,000: Ride the Hurricane.
Other top honors awarded at the WFEA conference were:
The Event of the Year award in large markets — Juneteenth in Tacoma and Friends of the Waterfront Park in Seattle.
The Event Organizer of the Year award in large markets — Ryan Schroeder, City of Tacoma Parks and Recreation, who also serves as board president for two Port Angeles nonprofits, the Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts and the Dungeness Crab Festival.
Volunteer of the Year — Vicky Hoyt for her 50 years of work with Seattle Seafair.
Event Supporters of the Year — Karen Hanan and Miguel Guillen of ArtsWA. Hanan founded the Juan De Fuca Association Arts Festival in Port Angeles before she was appointed Executive Director of ArtsWA by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2014.
New Hall of Fame inductees — Paula Beadle of Caravel Marketing and Sponsorship Mastery Productions, Melissa Jurcan of Compass One at Amazon and John Thorburn of Bold Hat Productions.
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Leah Leach is a former executive editor for Peninsula Daily News.
