Kincardine Scottish Festival needs leadership volunteers

To the Editor:

WE NEED YOU!

The Kincardine Scottish Festival and Highland Games is turning 20 next year! As we approach this momentous anniversary, we are looking to you, the community members of Kincardine, because we are in immediate need of your help to achieve that milestone.

And as the festival has grown over the years, Kincardine has grown with us, with upwards of 400 community members volunteering with us for more than 6,000 hours in 2018.

We are humbly grateful for your support, and hope that not only will you continue to grow with us, but that those of you who haven’t volunteered with us yet, might take this special anniversary year to consider joining us.

What would we do without our volunteers? Well, the short answer is that we would not be able to continue on – which is why we are reaching out to our community at this time. While we have many dedicated volunteers who give their heart and soul to the festival every year, at this time we simply don’t have enough volunteers in leadership roles to keep the festival functioning.

The Scottish Festival has been a staple of the Kincardine community since 1999, showcasing and preserving the cultural heritage of our area through music, food, and traditional competitions. The event brings together those of Scottish heritage, and those who admire it; those who play the bagpipes, and those who dance to them; those who savour the delicacy of haggis, and those who could, quite frankly, do without it.

Each year, Kincardine swells with the sounds of pipers and the footsteps of visitors from all across the province as they arrive in our beautiful lakeside town to visit during the festival weekend.

The Kincardine Business Improvement Area (BIA) reported in 2011 that the festival provides a positive economic impact annually of $2-million, providing support for our hospitality and tourism industries and local businesses, and introducing many new visitors to the beauty of our town that often steals their hearts and calls them back to return.

Starting now and leading up to the 2019 festival, we need your support in the form of your time and your talents to help us plan and execute the festival that meets the expectations you have come to know from us over the past two decades and is a point of pride for our community. We know that with your support, we can continue to keep alive the Scottish history that shaped our community, for new generations to learn about and to build their own ties with generations to come.

To join us immediately as a leadership volunteer, visit our website at kincardinescottishfestival.ca/volunteer or call the Kincardine Scottish Festival office at 519-396-9300.

For our 20th anniversary, we hope you will join us in our mission to continue to share the brilliance of our history and cultural heritage by celebrating the Scottish foundations of Kincardine and Bruce County.

Slainte!
Board of Directors
Kincardine Scottish Festival and Highland Games