New hope for Apple Blossom Tyme

By Andrew Keogh

The Apple Blossom Tyme Festival may get a new lease on life if a proposal made by Cramahe Community Services Director, Dan O’Brien gains community support.

In recent years the festival has fallen increasingly on the shoulders of Cramahe residents Pat Johnston with assistance from Carl Wilce. In a recent conversation with Cramahe Now, Ms. Johnston expressed her desire to retire and her concern that the festival carry on. She acknowledged Mr. O’Brien’s statement that there is a need for long-term planning and succession. In recent years the festival has been a financial and artistic success despite reduced participation from a broad cross section of the community in the organization.

Ms. Johnston has enlisted the assistance this year of Councillor Pat Westrope, but Mr. O’Brien’s vision will provide a more integrated and cohesive organization with a mandate to plan well into the future if it is put into place.

If he can find the support from inside the community, he is proposing that Apple Blossom Tyme be restructured. Mr O’Brien remarked that the event could be classified as an agricultural fair or the like so to open up opportunities for grant proposals and other funding available under the provincial Agriculture and Horticulture Act.

The director feels he can help establish an organizational structure which will ensure the festival’s continued existence. Under his proposal, interested stakeholders would create a governing board which would plan and execute the fair.

Numerous groups in the community already conduct fundraising at the festival so they may want to take an active part in keeping the festival alive and in helping it thrive in the long term.

Cramahe Council decided at its January 19 meeting to permit Mr. O’Brien to take action in building a board of stakeholders. The next step for Mr. O’Brien is to contact and bring together all interested parties including service clubs and local businesses. Through these meetings, Mr. O’Brien hopes to explain the process of instituting a board of stakeholders and gain support and commitment to the cause.