Bowfest is a festival to celebrate all things Bowen. Which means that it may mean many different things to many different people. Is Bowfest a country fair in which kids race slugs and spend endless hours nurturing and watering obscenely large vegetables?
Is Bowfest about the costumes, floats, and candy throwing of the parade? Or how about a live music venue, highlighting our local talent, while we dance on the shores of Crippen Park as the sun sets?
What about this year’s Logger Show and competitions? Surely Bowfest is about the games, entertainment, tradition and community?
The answer is a resounding YES to all these questions — and to the countless other examples that readers are no doubt thinking to themselves. This article will explore how four very different Bowentines are preparing for Bowfest 2015.
Ten-year-old Amelia Sorrentino’s dreams of successfully growing the largest zucchini at this year’s Country Fair were nearly ruined when disaster struck late last week: a deer jumped the garden fence and ravaged the zucchini right down to the root. Just when things looked their worst, Grandpa Pat (Buchanan) discovered a rough mammoth marrow in his own patch that had somehow escaped picking. Good luck to you Amelia in the judging.
Lena Simms, general manager of the Bowen Island Building Centre and numerous winner of best-in-show float for Bowfest’s parade, has spent the last few weeks gathering material for this year’s float creation. This year the BBC float will be made from 100 per cent recycled goods — “No new material” Lena says.
The Building Centre has a long tradition of a Bowfest Eve float-making party, where all the staff and their families come together to construct some truly unique and eye-catching creations (which also means they are there late for work if you need some last-minute supplies for your own float).
In true Bowen volunteer-committee-and-entertainment-business fashion, the stage line-up was short an act. Luckily the very gracious members of Taunting Mabel stepped up to the plate to fill that gap!
Vocalist and percussionist Janice MacLean is spending the next week polishing off the high-octane scales her band is know for. They’re working on songs that will, as Janice proclaims, “make all the Mythical Creatures come out of their hiding and dance, dance, dance”.
Get ready Bowen for one of our local bands to dazzle you with “new country, rock, blues and originals that will stay in your heads and in your hearts!” Thank you Taunting Mabel for doing bowfest such a solid favour.
Unique to Bowfest 2015, Gary Anderson has organized a Logger Show and competition. Working together with Twin Island, Metro Blasting, Black Bear, J&E Backhoe, Frank Seaberly and many more, Gary and the rest of the contestants have been busy sharpening saws and practising their axe throwing skills, not to mention digging holes for the climbing poles to be placed. This old-time community event has really brought the community together and is sure to wow the audience.
There is place for everyone at Bowfest and, as we get closer and closer to the big day, our community members continue their individual preparations from vegetable growing to axe throwing. Whether you are six or 96, Bowfest has something for you.
It is a wonderful event that brings our community together as we say goodbye to another summer.
