Town of Legal residents will party like it’s 2019 this weekend as the Fête au Village returns for the first time since the pandemic.
Legal’s 56th annual Fête au Village summer festival is this July 22-23. Thousands of Sturgeon County-area residents will line the town’s streets Friday and Saturday for the festival’s parades, fireworks, and demolition derby.
Father Georges Henri Primeau founded Fête au Village in 1964 as an extension of the town’s annual St. Jean Baptiste Day picnic, town historians report.
The Fête has been held every year since — apart from 2020 and 2021, during which the event was cancelled due to the pandemic — said organizing committee chair André Montpetit. That two-year hiatus cost organizers a lot of momentum, and it was a struggle to find bands and volunteers for this year’s festival.
“We’re excited to get going again,” he said, encouraging guests to come out and “party like it’s 2019.”
The two-day festival will feature its usual slate of paid and free events, Montpetit said.
Guests can come out on Friday for free hot dogs, ice cream, face painting, miniature train rides, and a kids’ parade, followed by a fireworks show at dusk.
Saturday guests can take in a pancake breakfast by the Legal Lions Club, and a parade down main street. Other activities include helicopter tours, a soapbox car derby, escape rooms, food trucks, a beer garden, and a town-wide scavenger hunt.
Smashy-smashy
“Our showcase event of the whole weekend is the demolition derby,” Montpetit said, where around a dozen drivers will drive into an old coal mine pit in town and smash their cars into scrap.
Amongst those drivers will be Morinville resident Scott Hills, who grew up watching his father build and demolish cars in the Fête au Village derby, and has driven in it himself since 2015.
“There’s nothing quite like a demolition derby where you can have a head-on collision with another car at 50 km/h and get away with it,” said the self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie.
“The adrenaline rush can’t be beat.”
Hills said he searches fields and back alleys for cheap cars to buy for the Fête au Village derby and spends at least 40 hours getting them ready to race. He has to strip anything off the car that might come loose — seats, lights, panelling, and more — and move the battery and fuel tank into the passenger compartment. Rules prohibit drivers from adding armour or rams to cars, but allow brackets to keep seats in place. He also likes to add silly paint jobs to his rides, such as the hippie stylings of the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine.
Derby drivers try to strike an opponent’s radiators and tires while protecting their own, Hills said. He personally favors big, loud hits to get the crowd on its feet. Whomever has the last car still mobile wins the prize money.
“It’s a lot safer than people think,” Hills said, as you generally don’t have the space to get much above 30 km/h.
Still, Hills said all drivers are required to wear hefty helmets during the race. He also wears coveralls and goggles to guard against hot liquids.
“Burning battery acid is not going to feel good,” he said.
Hills said the Fête itself is a great chance to catch up with old friends and have a good time.
“It’s something I look forward to every year,” he said of the Fête, and he is super excited to see it come back to Legal.
Visit www.feteauvillage.com for details.
