When advance ticket sales of 2009 season were down 25% last December, Antoni Cimolino, general director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival began to panic. The Toronto market was still strong, but ticket sales were lagging in the United States -- even with such hot offerings as Colm Feore in Macbeth and Cyrano de Bergerac.

The Stratford festival, which gets a mere 4% of its funding from Canadian government agencies, is a barometer of the tourism sector in Ontario and across Canada. As Stratford goes, so goes the country.

"When you are 96% dependent on the box office, you are like the canary in the mine shaft," says Mr. Cimolino, who says Stratford is the least-funded arts institution in the country.

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