Donald
Teuma-Castelletti
OTTER LAKE Dec. 2, 2017
A welcome to the Christmas season in Otter Lake saw a huge variety of activities take place all over town, as locals of all ages enjoyed sleigh rides, decorated their homes and a whole lot more, ensuring the municipality stays on Santa’s nice list.
Organized by the town’s recreation association, the Saturday evening Community Christmas Celebration turned out to be a huge success, even beyond the R.A.’s expectations.
“For our first time, we weren’t expecting such a big crowd,” said Desiree Tremblay, a member of the Otter Lake R.A.
The celebrations kicked off with a tree lighting ceremony at Memorial Park, where around 70 people came together. Complete with the choir from The Church of St. Charles Borromeo, candles were distributed as the crowd welcomed the coming of the holiday season.
Following this, everyone was welcomed to the R.A. hall, where a bonfire was held, and hot chocolate, marshmallows and hotdogs were provided. A lot of excitement was to be had with the sleigh rides, as provided by 710 Excursions to kids of all ages.
“From six till nine, they did nine rides and each time the wagon was jampacked,” said Tremblay. “There was even a lady, she was 94-years-old, and she wanted to go on. Why not? You can be a kid again. Every time they came back they were all carolling, smiling and happy.”
Danielle Chevalier, from the Comité 0-5 ans, put on a gingerbread house decorating activity, for which there was a huge turnout.
“She was ready for 25 kids and she didn’t have enough for all the kids,” said Tremblay. “We had over 70 children.”
On top of this, a huge basket was raffled off at a dollar a ticket, and featured everything from gift certificates to decorations and goodies. Marie Lafleur went home the lucky winner for the evening, of the roughly 250 people that entered.
A big part of the festivities was the house decorating contest, where locals were tasked with outfitting the outside of their homes in true Clark Griswold fashion. With around 30 submissions, it must have been hard to narrow it down to just three, but that job was left to the judges.
A slideshow of all the homes was compiled by Colleen McAuley, and the judges were driven by organizers from home-to-home to make their decision. In the end, first place went to Anita and Daniel Blaskie, second was Betty Richaud and third went to Joyce Dubeau.
Of course, what Christmas party would be complete without a visit from Santa Claus himself? Claus handed out gifts to the children with a little help from his assistants, distributing over 70 presents.
This was the first time that the Otter Lake R.A. has hosted the tree lighting ceremony, as different community organizations had done so in the past. After about five years of not having a celebration, resident Shannon LaSalle had suggested bringing it back and the R.A. decided it was a great idea.
The event, from the food to the activities, was all free to the community and everything – from raffle and contest prizes to the food – was donated by locals to help bring it all together. Volunteers made sure everything ran smoothly.
“I’m very happy with the event, we had such great participation and it was just amazing,” said Tremblay.
