As Phil Denault took the stage on Saturday to headline the Fort-Coulonge/Mansfield Country Festival, he looked out at the crowd before delivering some news.
He, his wife Carole Faubert and a team of volunteers spent a year preparing for this festival, which has been their labour of love for nine years running. Since last year’s festival ended, they have worked to bring in artists and vendors, and to prepare the venue to host them.
All of that time and dedication is what made this moment so difficult, as Denault announced that this year’s festival would be their last.
The husband-wife musical duo started the event in 2016, as a way to highlight local talent and support the local economy.
But, as they told THE EQUITY on Saturday, the amount of work and money it takes to put on the festival every year became too much.
“The volunteers are starting to get very tired, they’re very old too,” said Phil Denault, noting that it has gotten harder to find volunteers over the years.
Denault said they have never raised the admission as a way to keep the festival affordable for local people. But he said with rising costs and a limited sponsor base, it has become harder to cover all the expenses.
“We couldn’t grow more than we are now because we don’t have big businesses in the region. We don’t want to raise the price too high for local people.”
Denault said putting on the festival involves a lot of work behind the scenes. Once each year’s festival is over, he said, they are hitting the ground to apply for grants and seek partnerships.
“You have to work on the subsidies, whether it’s talking to the municipality, talking to the SADC, Heritage Canada, everyone who supports the festival, that’s where the work takes place,” Denault said.
Faubert said while it is nice to hear positive feedback from visitors, some of whom drove up to nine hours this year to attend their festival, she said they both want to move on to different things.
“They say that it’s the most beautiful festival of all the festivals they go to,” Faubert said. “We’ve put a lot of love into it.”
One of the festival’s final acts saw five young musicians from École secondaire Sieur-de-Coulonge play their first show on the Coulonge stage.
Denault invited the Carcajous du Nord, who recently attended the provincial Secondaire en spectacle talent show, to play a song they have spent months working on: Salebarbes’ Les haricots sont pas salés.
THE EQUITY caught up with the band after the show, who got a standing ovation from the crowd. Lead singer Raphael Fleury said it was a thrill getting to play the hometown stage.
“We never thought we would play here. We all sat down together one day and we said, ‘You know, it would be pretty cool if we could go play the country festival one day,’ Fleury said.
The group said they enjoyed playing in front of a younger crowd in Sept-Îles, but the hometown crowd brought a different kind of excitement.
“Addam [Romain] called me, he said ‘Hey Raph, we’re going to play on the big stage,’ I said ‘Whoa!’,” Fleury said.
The group said they are already lining up more shows for the summer, including Canada Day in Mansfield, Mansfield en fête, and then a country festival in Buckingham later this summer.
Denault has mentored the boys throughout their journey, giving them advice on musical arrangements, showmanship and singing. He said they played well in front of such a big crowd, which totalled over a thousand people including many of their friends and family.
“I think they did great [and] it’s nice to see all the kids cheering,” he said.
Looking back, Denault said the couple is proud of how much the festival grew over the years.
“I started with 75 trailers here, and then we ended up with close to 300. It’s grown a lot,” he said.
As the final notes faded from the Coulonge stage, Denault said that seeing crowds of young people cheering for local musicians gave him hope that the festival’s spirit would continue long after its last performance.
