Go back

The crowd at the Fêtes by Sylvain H. Boileau

A photograph, edited to look like a comic strip, of Sylvain H. Boileau leaning on a low wall to look at a brochure. On the lower left corner are the words: “The crowd at the Fêtes”.

Image: Photographer unknown (graphic design by Audrey Fauteux-Robillard), 1977.
City of Saint-Eustache. Archives. Fonds Boileau.

Audio excerpt: Interview with Sylvain H. Boileau, photographer for local newspapers in the Saint-Eustache region, by Sandrine Contant-Joannin, ethnologist, 2023.
Excerpt lenght: 54 seconds. Patrimoine culturel Vieux-Saint-Eustache collection.

Sylvain H. Boileau was a photographer for local newspapers in the region of Saint-Eustache in the 1970s and 1980s. He covered the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache a number of times. Here, he describes the kinds of who people came to the event. The excerpt is transcribed below:

Sylvain H. Boileau: Seeing the street closed and all the people in it, it was stunning to see so many people here! You couldn’t move. From the church all the way to the mill here, it was crazy! At that time, the Fêtes du Vieux had lots of different sponsors: O’Keefe, Molson, uh… Loto-Québec. Pretty much all of them were involved at one time or another, so you’d bump into executives or… or publicists or PR people from the different corporations.

For instance, I remember being on Réal Giguère’s show on TVA with uh… one of the executives, I’ve forgotten what her name was […]. We were on Réal Giguère’s show to promote the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache. That was in the early days.