Pioneer Days saw thousands of people walk the Mennonite Heritage Village grounds this past weekend.

Executive Director Barry Dyck says the first three days saw over 4,000 people come through the doors, which is quite a bit better than last year. He adds there are 480 volunteer time slots required to pull off the weekend festivities.

"Recognize that not every slot is filled with a new volunteer. There are some volunteers who are here every day, some of them fill more than one slot in a day, and they spend quite a few hours volunteering here. So, I would imagine we might have 300 to 400 who actually volunteer here on this weekend."

Dyck says there were two new features to Pioneer Days weekend this year. The first was a fireworks show on Friday evening at the soccer park in Steinbach.

"The other thing that is new this year; if you've ever been to our Semlin when there's a story being told in there, we tell the story of a little girl who spent her first winter in Canada living in a Semlin. That story has now been transcribed by one of our staff, Nita Wiebe, into a colouring book with a story in it. I need to go and buy five of those, one for each of my grandchildren," adds Dyck.

He notes he's thankful for the warm and sunny weather during the majority of the weekend.