The Underground Railroad Music Festival won’t be held here this year, but organizer Diana Braithwaite says the festival will be back in 2014.
Braithwaite, who initiated the festival in 2009, says plans are in the works to hold the event every second year, rather than annually.
“The festival actually is going really well, and it’s been quite successful,” said Braithwaite. “In order to keep it a manageable event for myself at this time, it kind of works having it every two years.
“It’s quite a lot of work and I want to start to get more involvement with the community as well so I’m going to be working on that and also bringing in a few national and international acts.
“There’s an old saying, ‘Don’t hang your hat where your hand can’t reach.’ I want to make sure I can reach my hat,” she quipped.
Braithwaite says she is aiming to hold the 2014 festival in August and is hoping to find a date, which won’t conflict with other major August events such as the Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games and the Kitchener Blues Festival.
Past festivals have proven popular, attracting crowds estimated at 400 to 600 people, said Braithwaite, who anticipates no problems with getting things rolling again for future events,
“I’ve already had a ton of calls about it, and promotional opportunities have come in as well,” she notes. “So I know that when we’re back in 2014 that it’s going to be well received.”
The 2014 festival will be the fifth since it was initiated by Braithwaite, a Toronto-based musician and a descendant of the original black settlers of the Queen’s Bush area.
The first two festivals were held in Glen Allan, which was considered a main terminus of the Underground Railroad, the term for a series of safe houses and individuals who helped black slaves reach Canada from the United States in the early 1800s.
The event was moved to Drayton’s Centennial Park in 2011 to take advantage of parking and other facilities.
