On Saturday, August 8, the shores of Lake Saint-Louis will hum with guitar licks and gospel-tinged voices as the 23rd edition of the West Island Blues Festival rolls into Dorval's Pine Beach Park. The festival won't be alone: for the first time, it is merging with Dorval en fête, the city's traditional cultural day, to turn a full Saturday at the waterfront into one long celebration running from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The blues portion kicks off at 3 p.m. and runs to 11, a lineup that moves from the blues-rock swagger of The Ramblers and the boogie-woogie keys of Big Lew, through the deep grooves of reggae veteran Jah Cutta, to the gospel-rooted soul of francophone singer Sylvie Desgroseilliers and the closing set by her son's band, Nino & Electric Soul. Around the music, the park will be filled with food vendors offering Jamaican patties and jerk chicken, beer and soft drink, in a family-friendly atmosphere. The day is a partnership with the City of Dorval, whose mayor, Marc Doret, said, "Dorval en fête is an activity that we've had for a long time in Dorval. It's our traditional cultural day. When we came along and partnered with the Blues Fest, we thought what a great opportunity to merge the two. So we go from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. with a little break in between the two, a one-hour break. But it just makes a fantastic day here in the park."
For Errol Johnson, the festival's co-founder and a deputy mayor of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, the partnership is a satisfying cap on more than two decades of building an event from nothing. "We've been on for the past 23 years and we've been providing good music, a good atmosphere and giving back to the community," Johnson said. "The event started from nothing but with time, it grew and took the form that it has today. We had no stage. And the beauty of it, it was the help of all the people who participated."
That founding story began in the early 2000s, when Johnson, a long-serving councillor and deputy mayor in Dollard des Ormeaux, conceived the idea of staging a blues festival. He got permission from the city to use a park and was introduced to Jim Beis, then the department head of sports and recreation for the city. The two men, who had each played guitar in their youth—Johnson the bluesman, Beis a heavy-metal fan—joined forces, and the first festival was held in 2003. That year, the West Island Black Community Association (WIBCA) received all of the proceeds to assist with renovations for the building they owned. Choosing the blues as the festival's anchor was easy for Johnson, who grew up in Jamaica: "Naturally coming from Jamaica, most people would figure I'd say, 'Let me have a reggae fest,' but I like blues because of the guitar licks, and I find it to be sort of soothing music."
As Beis put it, "Blues being the foundation of music genres was fitting for us because blues was the music that was created to raise awareness in society. When we do these events, yes, it's music, yes, it's a free outdoor concert, but what it does is raise awareness for organizations that have been around for decades."
Over the years, the festival has donated more than $250,000 to West Island organizations, from WIBCA to the West Island Women's Shelter, the Alzheimer Groupe Inc., and Literacy Unlimited, the beneficiary highlighted at this year's stop. The festival draws about 5,000 to 6,000 people, and the small scale gives the community a sense of local intimacy, as Beis noted: "Community for us has never been about how big you're perceived. For us, we're big to the point where we are much bigger than we've ever anticipated." He and Johnson deliberately named the festival for the whole region: "It's really about why we named it the West Island Blues Festival, we looked at it as a West Island gathering. That's why we never called it the Dollard Festival or the Pierrefonds Festival. It was the West Island's festival and that's what we're about."
For Literacy Unlimited, the support is crucial. Josephine Pietracupa, president of the organization's board of directors, said: "In terms of actual impact, it allows us to purchase books for our family literacy program. It also allows us to buy iPads for our digital literacy program for the seniors. So it basically allows us to purchase the tools that we need to be able to give our programs."
Pine Beach Park, at the corner of Chemin du Bord-du-Lac-Lakeshore and Avenue Clement, is on the lakefront, and organizers say the festival will be held rain or shine. Free parking is available nearby.
The Dorval stop is one of three on this summer's circuit, with the next in Pointe-Claire on August 29. For the thousands who spread out on the lawns, the day will be as much about community as about music. The lineup shifts each year, but the mission stays the same: a free day of music where the real headliners are the local causes it supports.