Batoche a “success” despite wild weather

“Just hanging out with family, bringing my kids along, family time – I know basically a lot of people that come here and I meet a lot of people.

“I love coming here.”

Joyce Howard hadn’t been to the event since she was five years old. The now grown woman said she still remembers a bit of what she saw back then.

“I remember them going around bring food to people and the races and the toilets lined-up, people lined-up a long ways, that’s what I remember,” Howard said.

She was there with her family again. They came to watch her brother race chuckwagons and her father compete in the fiddle competition.

“Now it’s beautiful here, back then… everyone was living in the tents and now we’ve got our own home, campers, so that makes one big difference,” laughed Edna Vandale, Howard’s mother. It was only her second time to the festival too.

She said back then there was lots of singing, there was a powwow and the track used to be in a different place.

“The buildings are nice and a lot of the music was different too, a lot of it was just starting out,” Vandale said, adding her husband is making his repeat performance. The first time they were there he also hit the stage.

It was the second time Dean Benson made the trip from Salmon Arm, B.C. for the festival.

“I’ve got ancestors here that were born and raised in Batoche and St. Louis… my roots are from here,” he said, explaining those roots in the area go back to the 1700’s.

Benson’s great-grandfather even fought in the Battle of Batoche.

“My great-great-grandpa has a shrine in St. Louis,” he said.

“We come back here all the time to see all our roots where my mom was from and my great-grandma and my grandma,” Benson said of his family of 11 siblings.

With people in high-spirits Claire Belanger-Parker, Back to Batoche manager, said they event was a success.

“If we could control Mother Nature, when she decided to wash Mother Earth, it would be different, but we can’t,” she said.

“They are wet, they are laughing, they are having a good time.”

There were a few changes to the schedule because of the weather – chariots and chuckwagons were cancelled on Saturday, some children’s activities were altered and the voyager games had a “hard time.”

“It is not safe to run with a bag of 600 pounds of flour on your back on the wet grass,” Belanger-Parker said.

The power also went out when Donny Parenteau was on stage Friday night, but he played a couple more tunes in the dark and promised to come back next year.

“It is all about safety, it is all about keeping people safe up here at Batoche and minimizing the risk,” she said.

For more photos: Back to Batoche

klavoie@panow.com

by Kellah Lavoie

Batoche a “success” despite wild weather

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