Catégorie : Tribune-Express (Hawkesbury)

It’s back and the people behind Bike Night à Hawkesbury promise that the second round of the musical gathering in the downtown core will be better than the original.

“And even if you don’t have a motorcycle, we want everybody to be there,” said Sylvie Allen, during an interview August 14.

“This music is for everybody,” said co-organizer Nathalie Lessard.

The first edition of Bike Night à Hawkesbury earlier this summer saw at least 400 people, according to organizer estimates, gathered in the downtown core to enjoy live music and a series of prize draws. Several local merchants made a point of staging evening hours at their establishments to serve both residents and out-of-town visitors for the event. Organizers expect to see as many people, if not more, for the second edition of Bike Night à Hawkesbury.

Lessard noted that making Hawkesbury’s downtown come alive during summer evenings for both people and businesses remains the priority of Bike Night à Hawkesbury.

“And we’d like to thank the businesses who support us as sponsors,” she said.

The second edition of Bike Night à Hawkesbury kicks off Friday night at 5 p.m. with a two-hour live music performance by Kevin David over at the Maximum Power Sports parking at the intersection of Main Street and John Street. The show moves across to Place des Pionniers at 7 p.m. for a two-hour concert featuring Feelin’ EZ.

Along with vendors and other activities, this Friday’s Bike Night à Hawkesbury will also support the cause of Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA). The Ottawa-based service group promotes public awareness of the needs of children and youth, with emphasis on supporting projects and programs that protect children from abuse and exploitation. More information on the group and its work is a www.bacaworld.org.

Dans son âme de musicienne, Judy Ann Bérubé a toujours su qu’elle était une blueswoman.

«J’ai toujours chanté le blues», a-t-elle déclaré, en riant, lors d’un entretien accordé à l’issue d’un jam session de blues organisé vendredi soir à la Place des Pionniers dans le cadre de la série musicale estivale de l’Espace Castor Vert.

Bérubé s’est produite avec ses collègues artistes de blues, Gary Cahier et Frankie James, proposant des morceaux de blues classiques ainsi que certaines de leurs propres compositions.

«Je suis chanteur de blues et de rock depuis 50 ans maintenant», a déclaré Mme Bérubé, qui travaille le jour comme coordonnateur des loisirs pour la ville de Brownsburg-Chatham, de l’autre côté de la rivière des Outaouais, au Québec.

Bien que Mme Bérubé ait toujours été passionnée par la musique et le chant, elle s’est d’abord concentrée sur le rock ‘n’ roll et le rock classique. Sa révélation pour le blues est plus récente.

«C’est il y a une dizaine d’années que j’ai décidé de changer de répertoire, dit-elle. Je fais toujours du rock. J’ai un nouveau spectacle, avec un tout nouveau groupe, et je mélange encore un peu de blues à mon spectacle de rock».

Mais, a-t-elle ajouté, le blues parle à son cœur et à son âme.

«Tous les styles de musique sont issus du blues, dit-elle. Le blues est comme le véritable modèle de toute musique. Quand je joue du rock ‘n’ roll, je peux sentir le blues à l’intérieur».

Elle reconnaît l’influence de la musique et des chanteurs de blues sur son propre style de jeu.

«Janis Joplin, je l’aime (la musique) depuis toujours, a déclaré Mme Bérubé. Etta James, Coco Tyler, Aretha Franklin, elles sont toutes là. J’aime le vieux blues, le soul blues».

Mme Bérubé a un album que les amateurs de musique peuvent encore trouver. Elle prépare un autre album, mais en attendant, ceux qui souhaitent la suivre peuvent la trouver sur YouTube ou à l’adresse www.judyann.ca.

Constitué majoritairement d’aînés âgés d’au moins 80 ans, Vankleek Hill Fiddlers est un groupe musical au talent phénoménal.

L’orchestre a vu le jour il y a plus de 45 ans et est loin d’être démodé avec, entre autres, ses valses classiques. Il les exécute de façon magistrale à l’aide des instruments comme le violon et le piano, qui n’ont plus de secret pour ses membres.

«J’aime beaucoup la musique et le violon, qui est un instrument très difficile. Beaucoup de personnes jouent à l’oreille et d’autres, en regardant les notes. Nous nous regardons et nous cherchons le son avec les doigts», a expliqué Samme Putzel, qui a intégré le groupe voilà huit ans.

Elle a précisé que l’orchestre n’est pas composé de professionnels de la musique. «Ce n’est pas nécessaire d’être des experts. Il faut juste vouloir jouer avec nous, danser avec nous et partager la musique pour faire partie du groupe», a indiqué Mme Putzel.

Denise Cadieux fait partie des Vankleek Hill Fiddlers depuis 25 ans. Elle souligne la bonne entente qui existe dans la formation et se réjouit d’avoir un beau passe-temps. Armand Guay a déjà fait 15 ans avec le groupe. «C’est le fun, j’ai du plaisir à jouer du violon. On joue souvent pour les personnes âgées dans les résidences», a-t-il déclaré.

L’orchestre, dont le membre le plus âgé a 94 ans, offre à peu près deux spectacles par mois. Chacun de ses concerts peut durer jusqu’à une heure et demie.

Everyone needs somewhere they can call home when they’re sick or alone with no one to care for them or who cares about them. That is the reason for Refuge: Les chevaux d’espoir, the Horses of Hope Shelter.

The former farm on Pattée Road between both Hawkesbury and Champlain Township provides a home now for more than a dozen horses. Nève Lavigne, a professional horse therapist, created the shelter about two years ago. It felt like the right thing to do.

“I’ve always loved horses,” Lavigne said, “ever since I was five. When I was young, I’d always wanted to operate a shelter.”

Originally from Chatham-Brownsburg, across the Ottawa River in Québec, Lavigne now lives in Hawkesbury and travels around Ontario and parts of Québec, working with clients whose horses need special treatment to help get over injuries or else recover from some diseases that have left them physically weakened.

Her work over the past five years as a physical therapist for horses helped fuel her desire to set up a shelter. She has seen cases where some horses were neglected or not getting the proper care and treatment needed when they were sick or hurt. She’s also seen how increasing expenses forced some former horse owners to give up their animals because they can no longer afford them.

Lavigne looked around and found an old farm that had become dilapidated but had a good 20 acres of open pasture and a barn and outbuildings that were built solid, even if their wooden exteriors were weathered and worn. She began, with help later from volunteers, to fix up the buildings for storage of hay for winter feeding, and create roomy stalls and common holding areas for the horses who found their way to the shelter.

There is an assignment schedule for volunteers about horses that they are responsible for feed and care. Lavigne herself deals with each and every one of her equine charges. Julie Lelievre, one of the volunteers, noted that often Lavigne will get up in the middle of the night to check on a particular horse that is recovering from a past injury or some sickness.

“This really a great cause,” Lelievre said, about the shelter. “We get to save them.”

Some of the horses at the shelter are temporary residents. Lavigne and her volunteers run an adoption program to help find suitable new homes for horses that are young and healthy enough to become someone’s new friend. For some horses, though, the shelter serves as both hospice and home them, someplace they can spend their final years in comfort and care.

“There’s a connection with horses and people,” said Lavigne. “When you save a horse, then there’s a different connection than with a horse that’s always had a good life.”

The biggest challenge to operating a shelter for horses is financial. Lavigne’s operation depends on donations and grants, when available, to cover simple expenses like buying hay for winter feed and dealing with any veterinary costs for some of the horses. A corn roast-and-music fundraiser over the August long weekend has provided at least $2000 towards shelter costs.

Anyone wishing to donate to the shelter or become a volunteer can email refugeleschevauxdespoir@gmail.com.

Plans are still in the works for improvements to the Alfred skateboard park with funding the only delay to the project.

“We are still waiting for word from the province,” said Manon Besner, Alfred-Plantagenet Township parks and recreation director.

The budget planned for improvements to the skatepark at Larocque Park is about $150,000. The township has applied to the Ontario Trillium Foundation for a community assistance grant. Besner expects to have a reply about the application by September.

“The plan is to do a cement base for the skatepark,” she said. “All the structures will then be set in the concrete.”

Right now the skatepark has an asphalt base which is more prone to crumbling with age. A concrete is considered “more professional” for a skatepark and is typical of skateparks in larger urban centres.

The township has also budgeted $50,000 towards purchase of some new structures to install at the skatepark once the concrete base is made. Part of the proceeds from a recent fundraiser event at Boisé Larocque, organized by local youth with help from the parks and recreation department, will also go towards the new equipment purchase.

Some of the trails in Boisé Larocque are closed because of salvage logging work in the Alfred community woods.

Manon Besner, Alfred-Plantagenet parks and recreation director, explained that the salvage logging is necessary to remove trees damaged or toppled during last year’s severe windstorm in May and ice and wind storms in the region earlier this year.

“The area involved is about one hectare,” Besner said during an interview August 3. “It’s about one-third of the red pine plantation.”

Some salvage harvesting was done last year and the current operation is meant to complete the work of removing toppled trees and those that were uprooted but have not yet fallen or are damaged in other ways. These trees can pose a risk for anyone using the trails in that section of the woods for walking or cycling in the spring, summer and autumn, or snowshoeing or cross-country skiing in the winter.

Ott Family Logging of Eganville was contracted to do the salvage logging. While the red pine section of the woods is closed to the public until the work is done, trails in other parts of the forest remain open for use.

Besner noted that the salvage logging should be finished by the end of August. The salvaged wood will be sold on the timber market. Ott Family Logging will get some of the proceeds and the township will use its share to fund future treeplanting work in Boisé Larocque and also for local recreational infrastructure improvements.

A l’Orignal couple are happy to have reached an understanding with Champlain Township over their concerns about the impact of a drainage improvement project on their property.

“Much better now that we know the truth,” said Sandy Golding, following a late-afternoon meeting August 3 between her and her spouse, Steve MacCulloch, and Mayor Normand Riopel and Éric Leroux, Champlain Township drainage superintendent.

The subject of the meeting was the impact that planned rehabilitation work to the Mill Creek municipal drain might have on the couple’s property located near the intersection of County Road 17 and Cassburn Road.

The township needs to do some excavation work and bank stabilization of parts of the municipal drain to ensure a free flow of storm water and also reduce the risk of slope erosion that results in blockages and causes flooding of lands alongside the municipal drainage route.

Township council approved the Mill Creek municipal drain improvement plan during an earlier session. Notice of the project was placed in local papers and notices also sent out to residents whose properties bordered the municipal drain, explaining what their share of the rehabilitation work cost would be.

During interviews with local media prior to the August 3 meeting with the mayor and the drainage superintendent, MacCulloch said he hadn’t received any notice and the first he knew about the Mill Creek rehab work was when a trio of workers contracted to do the work showed up in his yard to do a preliminary site survey.

« They told me they were looking at the trees that they were going to cut down, » MacCulloch said. « I told them ‘You’re not going to be cutting down any trees.’ »

The trio gave MacCulloch a business card and then left. He called the township and arranged an on-site meeting at his house with Mayor Riopel and Superintendent Leroux.

« I’m really concerned with the wildlife back there, » MacCulloch, said, indicating the woodland area of the municipal drain that borders his property. « We have mallards that have been nesting there for years. »

He also noted that the woods are home to a variety of other birds, including cardinals and several types of woodpecker.

« They’ve had enough loss of their habitat, » he said.

MacCulloch also pointed out a crabapple tree that was part of the property when his father owned it. The tree has become a family heritage piece and he was concerned that it might end up cut down or damaged.

Superintendent Leroux apologized to MacCulloch and Golding for the surprise visit from the contractors for the project. Leroux said that he was trying to meet in person with all the property owners in advance of any work done as part of the Mill Creek rehabilitation project to explain what would be done and to hear any concerns before any work began on or near their property. The contractors, he said, should not have visited without him being present also.

Leroux listened to both MacCulloch and Golding explain their worries about the Mill Creek rehab project. He then explained what part of their property might be included as part of the rehabilitation work. Leroux noted that most of the work might just involvd removal of dead or damaged trees along the slope of the drain route and placing stones on the bank to reduce the risk of erosion.

« The goal is to make sure we stabilize the bank, » he said. «If we don’t have to touch anything, then we won’t. »

Long ago, Nathalie Frenière used to dream of being an artist. Now her works are part of a virtual art gallery set up in Florence, Italy.

“When I was young, my dream was to be a painter,” Frenière said during an interview at her home studio in Vankleek Hill.

As a child and during her teen years, Frenière would spend many days visiting around various museums and art galleries. Her father had a collection of paintings and he did encourage her artistic temperament, but his advice for her was to pursue a career in commercial art.

“So I was a graphic artist in Montréal,” she said. “I used to work for Disney then.”

Her commercial assignments work for the House of Mouse had her doing illustrations of all the major Disney characters for use as art prints, T-shirt designs and other types of commercial spinoffs.

By the time she was 30, Frenière was the director of a commercial arts studio in Montréal, until there was a change in the economy and she was laid off. She went back to school to study computer infographics and found employment in that field.

But commercial art was not her passion. After a while she decided to devote herself fulltime to her creative works. First she went to Paris to study the Impressionists and then returned home to begin her new career as a full-time artist.

“My style is more semi-abstract landscapes,” she said. “Very modern.”

Her study of impressionist art, she explained, helped her focus on the element of emotion in the subjects and colours of her paintings. In between working on her own pieces, she now helps mentor others. At one point she had as many as 40 students studying with her.

Virtual gallery

Over the past years, Frenière has had her work accepted for display in a variety of venues, including a five-year show at the Ward Nasse Gallery in New York City, and a show at the 2014 FIFA World Cup Soccer Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“I have been showing and selling my paintings for five years,” she said, estimating the number of her completed works about 500 pieces of various sizes.

“I do a lot of big pieces,” she said, adding that landscapes are her preference.

“I do a lot of sky scenes,” she said, smiling. “My favourite colour, of course, is blue.”

Her latest triumph now will be her first European gallery appearance in August, one which takes advantage of cyber technology. Several of her pieces will be on display with the Art Armando Xhomo Gallery in Florence, Italy as part of a virtual exhibition hosted by the gallery. She and fellow franco-ontarian artist Lise B.L. Goulet will present Sky, Land and Sea (Cielo, Terra e Mare), with the support of a grant from the Ontario Art Council and the Fondation Clément-Berini Foundation.

“For me, it’s very exciting,” she said. “It’s kind of a dream come true.”

Later in the year, Frenière will fly to Italy, bringing with her 25 of her works for an on-site display at the Florence gallery. Altogether, this year, Frenière’s work will be on public display in at least four locations, the others including galleries in Toronto, Ottawa, and Québec City.

While she expects that she will be occupied with meeting and talking to patrons of the Art Armando Xhomo Gallery while she is in Florence, Frenière is certain she will find inspiration during her sojourn in Italy to guide her choice of subjects for future paintings.

“Travelling is important for artists,” she said. “It helps one meet and experience new things.”

 

https://www.facebook.com/martalock.profilodue.9/

La Ville de Hawkesbury a tenu le 29 juillet dernier la 5^e édition de son festival Western à la Place des Pionniers.

«On aime essayer de divertir les gens avec toutes sortes de choses. Il y a eu le festival multiculturel avec différents types de musique, ça c’est un autre style de musique», a expliqué le conseiller municipal Yves Paquette, du comité organisateur.

Le country était revenu à l’honneur pour ce premier festival après la COVID-19. Se sont produits pour l’occasion, Marven James, Normand Campeau, Railroad Sinners, Whiskey River Band et The Dark Horses.

Les spectateurs n’ont pas boudé leur plaisir. Debout ou assis sur leurs chaises, ils ont savouré les nombreuses mélodies qui leur ont été servies samedi, dès 14h. Le dernier spectacle avait débuté à 20h30.

L’année prochaine, l’offre pourrait changer avec l’introduction de nouveaux rythmes.

«L’an prochain, si je m’en occupe encore, ce que j’aimerais peut-être faire, c’est faire deux jours. Mais vendredi, ça serait du blues car beaucoup de monde me demande du blues. C’est une chose à laquelle je vais commencer à penser après que ce festival va être fini», a assuré M. Paquette.

La 5^e édition de La Baie Run qui vise à collecter des fonds pour la Fondation de l’Hôpital général de Hawkesbury (HGH) a réuni environ 15 000 $ au cours de l’événement qui s’est déroulé le 29 juillet au parc municipal de L’Orignal.

«On est autour de 15 000 $, on est encore en train de calculer les fonds», a indiqué l’un des organisateurs de l’événement, Patrick Lalonde, à la fin de la course à laquelle ont participé 500 personnes. Il a rappelé que les fonds seront remis à la Fondation de l’Hôpital général de Hawkesbury.

Erin Tabakman, directrice générale de la fondation, remercie les organisateurs pour leur initiative. Elle déclare au journal qu’il s’agit d’un événement très important et que, depuis cinq ans que La Baie Run existe, elle a déjà donné environ 120 000 $ à l’hôpital.

La somme amassée pour cette 5^e édition va contribuer à acheter des équipements médicaux, dont le centre a besoin dans son projet d’agrandissement. L’hôpital entend offrir des services pour lesquels les patients sont obligés d’aller se faire soigner à Ottawa, ou pour lesquels la liste d’attente est très longue.

Mammographie 3D

«Maintenant, une de nos priorités est l’achat d’une nouvelle machine mammographique. Cette Nouvelle machine va être 3D au lieu de 2D. Ce sera une très grande amélioration de la détection du cancer du sein», estime Mme Tabakman.

La cause tient à cœur à la communauté, qui n’hésite pas à soutenir l’hôpital au travers de La Baie Run. Le maire du canton de Champlain, Normand Riopel, présent à l’événement, a évoqué «une belle levée de fonds pour une bonne cause au profit de l’Hôpital général de Hawkesbury. Il faut garder en santé notre hôpital.»

Charles Parent, l’un des participants, pense que l’argent qu’il a donné pour participer à la course pourra servir à quelqu’un. «J’ai un enfant malade qui a eu la méningite quand il avait 2 ans. S’il n’y avait pas eu de bons hôpitaux, il ne serait plus ici. Aujourd’hui, il est dans la GRC (Gendarmerie royale du Canada) en Alberta, grâce aux hôpitaux. C’est pour ça que je fais la course», a indiqué le sexagénaire.

Les organisateurs de l’événement, Geneviève Thibodeau, Patrick Lalonde et Sébastien Lalonde n’ont pas manqué de remercier tous leurs commanditaires. Ils ont précisé que sans eux, la course n’aurait pas pu se tenir.