Feast of St. Jean gets city approval

WOONSOCKET – The City Council has granted its approval with a unanimous vote, and city event impresario Albert R. Beauparlant is now rushing to finish plans for a revival of the Feast of St. Jean Bapiste on June 25.

The Feast had been an annual fixture in local French Canadian culture around the dawn of the 1900s and Beauparlant is aiming to bring it back this year with a message of community concern for local children and families while also celebrating the multi-ethnic makeup of Woonsocket’s residents.

“It is to highlight the importance of bringing the city together to really put a focus on the crises we are facing, the opioid crisis and the high numbers for child abuse and neglect,” Beauparlant said of the festival.

Not only will the planned event include an assortment of booths providing information on a wide-range of family support services, Beauparlant and his Feast of St. Jean Baptiste committee are also planning a free cookout for 2,500 local children and their families, and a scattering of bands, entertainment acts and other activities on the upper portion of Main Street near the Stadium Theatre and Chan’s Fine Oriental Dinning.

Beauparlant already has commitments from groups wanting to perform on the

feast’s seven planned entertainment stages and at least 10 booths will be operating to sell ethnic foods during the 4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. festival on June 25.

“The other aspect of the feast is that will it teach children about our great history

here in Woonsocket and also the great heritage we have here in the city,” he said.

Beauparlant has experience in putting on other city-located events such as “Jazz on the Blackstone,” and the city’s 100th- and 125th-Anniversary block parties, and he plans to make the Feast of St. John Baptiste as memorable as all the rest.

“Each of the past events has punctuated a time and a place in the city’s history and the feast will be no different,” Beauparlant explained.

“You can just look at what we have done in the past and see that Woonsocket has one hell of a party coming their way,” Beauparlant said.

To get onto the final stretch, Beauparlant and the feast’s organizers had to meet with representatives of the city’s police department and public works department to discuss their event requirements and also to make arrangements for security details and insurance coverage.

Beauparlant said the City Council wanted everything to have a sign off before it would consider formal approval of the feast’s permits. Beauparlant and members of the organizing committee went to the City Council’s last meeting and detailed all work completed on the check list to gain the panel’s unani-

mous support.

“We got everything in place and won everything we needed from the city,” Beauparlant said.

The organizing committee has even donned Woonsocket Superhero wrist bands to show that the city “stands united,” Beauparlant said.

The June 25 event will also continue the original feast’s religious traditions, with a planned ringing of church bells throughout the city and an opening all-denominational religious observance as the feast gets underway.

The city’s past Festival of St. Jean the Baptiste was an offshoot of the St. Jean Baptiste observances held annually in Quebec, Canada, and other largely French Canadian communities to the north.

French Canadians began celebrating the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste, honoring the Jewish preacher who baptized Jesus Christ in the waters of the River Jordan, in the 1830s and eventually founded the St. Jean Baptiste Society in the 1840s to continue to promote French Canadian Catholic culture.

Over time the feast developed more into community celebrations of the arrival of summer weather in June with parades, music concerts, sports tournaments, and even fireworks. The festival’s origins were brought to Quebec with the new arrivals coming from France where St. Jean Baptiste was also viewed as a patron saint of French Catholics.

Quebec adopted the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste as one of its national holidays in 1977 and today banks and governmental offices continue to take the day off as a holiday.

Banks and state and federal offices will be open in Woonsocket when the local Feast of St. Jean Baptiste is held on June 25, but Beauparlant is hoping that many of the city’s residents will choose to visit Main Street for the feast just the same.

“The city is united and that is why we are coming together. We are going to show off everything good in the city,” Beauparlant said.