Celtic Festival brings families together at Domaine Maizerets

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

Ever since the Quebec Celtic Festival moved to its current home at the Domaine Maizerets, people in Limoilou have been able to hear it before they could see it – the skirl of the bagpipes, the pounding of bodhrans and bass riffs from the beer tent and the thump of weights hitting the turf at the Highland Games grounds, followed by the cheers of the crowd and a delighted shriek of “Quarante-huit pieds, deux pouces!” from veteran commentator Isabelle Lessard.

This year, as they got closer, festival-goers heard a new sound – barking. For the festival’s 20th anniversary, organizers decided to add a Celtic- themed dog show. Eleven dogs, ranging from Irish wolfhounds the size of ponies to a tiny chihuahua, paraded on Sunday afternoon before a festival audience and a jury including festival mascot Ben Stew and two local dog lovers. The judging was all in good fun, prizes were given after a random draw and all 11 very good boys and girls went home with a bag of biscuits.

Limoilou resident Julie Massé came with her partner Renaud Brissonneault – wearing full William Wallace makeup, decked out in the Scottish and Breton flags and speaking English with a surprising Irish accent – and their six-year-old beagle, Frankie, wearing a leprechaun outfit. “I already had the leprechaun costume and a friend of ours sent us the link [to sign up for the dog show] and we thought it would be just perfect,” Massé said.

A few feet away, Carl Huot of Val-Bélair stood in a medieval outfit, posing for pictures with his Irish wolfhound, Freya. “I’ve been coming to the St. Patrick’s Day parade and the festival with Freya for years and I thought this would be fun,” he said.

There was something for everyone at the Domaine Maizerets from Sept. 5-7, from the Viking encampment and the enchanted forest to the beer tent, the two outdoor stages – one for the bagpipers and one for a range of Celtic bands and dance ensembles – and the Highland Games grounds, where amateurs learned their way around the stone throw and the caber toss with encouragement from Lessard and Jason Baines, whose enthusiastic bilingual explanations of Highland Games minutiae are becoming another cherished festival tradition. Baines and Banyan Lehman, a Guelph, Ont.-based athlete who is also bilingual and unafraid to let her enthusiasm shine through, won the men’s and women’s professional events this year, to the delight of the crowd.

For members of the Irish and anglophone communities, and for longtime habitués, the festival was a bit like a family reunion. “It’s a great opportunity for [the dancers] to show off their culture; it’s a unique dance style and they’re very passionate about it,” said Shannonite Nina Richard, co- ordinator of the Shannon Irish Dancers. “We’ve been coming to the festival as long as we can remember.”

Tara Connor, a musician who has Irish ancestry and grew up in British Columbia and the Yukon, has lived in Quebec for more than 30 years. She brought her eight-month-old granddaughter, Juliette, to hear local Celtic band Miss Viking’s on the main stage. “I wanted to expose her to Irish music and culture and [get her] to hear some English,” Connor said. “I came for the music, but my friends are really into the Highland Games and the [blacksmithing] at the Viking camp.”

The grounds were also full of people who said they had no known Celtic ancestry but enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere, and others who had discovered a faraway Celtic ancestor through genealogy. Stacy Girard helped her friends at the Clan MacLeod table in the genealogy tent for many years before discovering her own distant Scottish roots. “I had an ancestor who was a fille du Roy and it turns out her mother was from Clan MacRae,” Girard said. For her, getting in touch with her roots over the past two years has been a powerful experience that helped her process losing her mother and navigating a falling-out with her siblings.

Festival cofounder Guy Morisset said he started to lay the groundwork for the event when he joined St. Andrew’s Church many years ago and realized the extent of the historical and cultural gulf between English- and French-speaking communities in the city. “At the beginning, I started the festival to bridge cultures, and we do still do that,” he said. “But what I like best now is seeing families walk by with smiles on their faces.”