Lack of venue, support cancels Townshippers’ Day for first time

Anglos in the Eastern Townships won’t gather on a fairground this September to browse kiosks, visit a petting zoo, watch clog dancers and listen to fiddlers.

For the first time in 38 years, the Townshippers Association won’t be holding Townshippers’ Day, an annual celebration of all things English in the rolling region east of Montreal.

The dwindling of the anglophone community and a generalized decline in volunteerism have made it too difficult to stage the event, said Gerald Cutting, the association’s president.

“In a real sense, Townshippers’ Day, you could say, is a monitor of the vitality of the English-speaking population,” he said.

When the annual event was inaugurated in 1979, “the Englishspeaking population of the Townships was larger and younger,” Cutting said.

But with the exodus of anglophone youth and aging of the community, there are no longer enough volunteers to plan and staff the event, he said.

In recent years, the association has become increasingly dependent on its own staff and municipal employees in the various towns where Townshippers’ Day was held to organize it, Cutting said. But small towns, grappling with rural depopulation and budget cuts, simply don’t have the resources to take on that burden anymore, he said.

The event used to be held in a different town or village each year, attracting thousands of visitors from across the region.

But when two towns that had offered to host it this year withdrew, there was no choice but to pull the plug, Cutting said.

“The vitality of the anglophone community is in a fragile state right now,” he said.

“It is a much older population and it has lost a lot of the youthful vitality that comes with people who are actively engaged in their community.”

Cutting, 69, has seen that decline first-hand in his hometown of Coaticook (population: 9,000), 165 kilometres southeast of Montreal.

“When I was gong to Coaticook High School, about 40 per cent of the population was Englishspeaking. There were churches. About 60 per cent of the stores were owned by English-speaking

merchants. There was an English school. There were two passenger trains a day.

“The present population of Coaticook that declares itself to be English-speaking is six per cent and 65 per cent of that population is over the age of 65. It’s a tremendous shift,” he said.

While numerically in decline, English-speaking Townshippers are fiercely proud of their heritage.

“The first Cutting in Baldwin Mills (16 kilometres southwest of Coaticook) was in 1792, so we’re not new to the region at all,” Cutting said.

First settled by New Englanders in the late 18th century, the region was 58-per-cent English-speaking in 1861. Today, anglos make up less than six per cent of the population.

Twenty-one per cent of community members are over 65.

The community suffers from a dearth of people between 35 and 54 years of age to work, volunteer and act as caregivers, according to the association.

But Cutting said while Townshippers’ Day is on hiatus, it will return, probably in a modified form.

The idea of holding it in a different community each year is probably no longer viable, he said. However, one option under consideration is to find two permanent venues in different parts of the Townships that could host

the event on alternate years.

Cutting said the association will also look into obtaining funding to hire organizers, since it’s no longer possible to count on volunteers.

“I think we have always been very, very resourceful as people, that we have a pioneering spirit, and so what I’m telling everybody is OK, we can’t do it this year, but let’s make the most of our year to investigate, to plan and to look at ways and means to make this happen,” he said.