T-day becomes ‘Festival des Townshippers Festival’ for fall 2018

The Townshippers Association officially announced the return of Townshippers Day on Wednesday, confirming The Record’s report from the beginning of March that the annual event will be back for at least the next three years starting at Richmond Regional High School on September 29. In an effort to make the celebration of local English more interesting to a broader audience, the gathering has been rebranded “Festival des Townshippers Festival” and will revolve around the theme, “Everybody’s a Townshipper.”

“We feel this is something everybody is going to be able to enjoy,” said Townshippers Association President Gerald Cutting, “we’re all going to get together and we’re all going to celebrate what is, in a real sense, what it is to be an English speaking Quebecer in the Eastern Townships. For one day anybody can be a Townshipper in the same way that on Saint Patrick’s Day, anybody can put on something green and be Irish and celebrate an Irish festival.”

The new festival has been made possible through a partnership with the CIUSSS de l'estrie – CHUS, the regional integrated health and social services institution, as well as The Eastern Townships School Board, and Cutting said that at this point in time a lot of the details surrounding what the Townshippers Festival will look like have yet to be decided

“We’ve got to work on that with our partners,” the President said. “There’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into planning a Townshippers Day and we don’t have that all planned out right now.”

A planning committee formed of members from the Townshippers, the ETSB, and the CIUSSS de l'estrie – CHUS will be coming together in the next few weeks to start sorting out what the festival will ultimately end up looking like, but Cutting said that the intention is to walk the line between those members of the community who are looking for something new and those who are really looking for the same old familiar Townshippers Day.

“It’s going to be a focus on Townshippers,” he said, adding that the organization wants to find ways to get others to join in on the celebration.