L'Autre St. Jean-The Non-Event

After the huge kerfuffle surrounding the anglophone artists playing at the Fete St. Jean celebration in Parc Pelican, in Rosemount, you'd think that there'd be more of a turnout, but the culmination of ten days of intense media debate turned out rather anti-climatic.

When bluegrass band Lake of Stew took to the stage to open the celebration at 6:00PM there were less than 100 people in the audience.
Yup, less than 100. Argh....

There were only about 20 protesters from radical group, the Reseau de Resistance du Quebecois which tried to disrupt the set by making noise with drums, fog horns and by shouting. They were closely monitored by the police who outnumbered the protesters by about three to one.
The best part of it all were the beautiful horses that the police rode as a measure of crowd control.

The protesters were poorly received by the hostile crowd, and finally put down their placards.

About 2 hours later, when the audience had swelled considerably, the radicals had long given up the ghost. They stayed to enjoy the rest of the show and when Bloodshot Bill began his rockabilly set, some of the radicals, (feeling no pain...er... at this point) danced to his music.. (sigh...)

After all the point was made and a party is a party. It's still a holiday!