Celtic bash

Christine Eyolfson says Fort William Historical Park's Celtic Fair lets her reconnect to her Scottish roots.

Eyolfson decided to camp out at the fort for the weekend long festival with her 12-year-old-daughter Rachel Goettlicher and her 10-year-old-niece Kristen. The festival, which started on Saturday, had musical performances from fiddler Natalie McMaster and Celtic attractions from jugglers to sword fighters.

Eyolfson, whose grandmother is Scottish, said she much prefers haggis, made from a sheep’s offal, oatmeal, suet and onion, to hotdogs. While Kristen agreed with her Aunt, Rachel said she didn’t like the taste of the Scottish dish.

 “We came last year for the first time and we decided to come again this year,” Eyolfson said. “There’s a lot to see and do and I can get back to my Scottish roots. I like learning about it. Everything makes this day wonderful from the reenactments to the music.”

Ann Smith came to the festival with her husband, Barry, her two grandchildren and her son and his wife. They were only able to come on Sunday before they headed back to Toronto. She said they wanted to do as much as possible with the time they had and went on a canoe ride, listened to some of the bands perform and shot a musket or two.

“This is our second last day here,” Smith said. “The festival is on so we wanted to show the grandkids this facility. It’s very important to have these kinds of festivals because it brings a community together. To me, this is a very authentic place and it shows, especially to the children, what pioneer life was back then.”

Peter Boyle, manager of historical operations at Fort William Historical Park, said having the Celtic fair follow two events with different cultural backgrounds helped to show just how diverse the fur trade was.

“The fur trade is very diverse culturally and of course the region is diverse culturally,” Boyle said. “That’s one of our mandates to celebrate our culture. This is a wonderful facility to do it and we have a lot of expertise and resources to do that. I think that’s what we’re trying to do and we’re doing a very good job at it.”

Boyle said he guess that more than 3,000 people attended the festival throughout the weekend.