Community Corner
Raritan River Festival Coming to the New Brunswick Waterfront Sunday
All-day festival will feature music, food, children's activities, and fundraising.
In years past, the Raritan River was the lifeline of New Brunswick. The boats it once carried, laden with passengers and agricultural products, drove the city's economy, and the river itself brought forth both food and recreation.
Visitors to Elmer Boyd Park this Sunday will have the chance to discover for themselves some of the history and appeal of the river, at the city's annual Raritan River Festival. First held in 1980 for the city's tricentennial celebration, the festival will feature activities from the educational to the purely entertaining.
“We want people to be more aware of the river, and to use it more,” said Scott Yaede, co-chairman of the New Brunswick Environmental Commission. “Folks in New Brunswick, unless they're fishermen, are never down at the river, unfortunately.”
The festival this year will have a number of activities that organizers hope will remedy that problem. Against a backdrop of live music on two stages, provided by area bands such the VooDudes and other performers, including Cecelia Salvino and Sailors in Rags, the festival will include booths manned by area vendors and by environmentally minded organizations like the Lawrence Brook Watershed Partnership.
The day also will feature a unique wrinkle on a raffle, with a motif appropriate to life along the river.
Rather than buying raffle tickets, participants can donate $5 to the Beez Foundation, a nonprofit organization that fights pediatric brain cancer. Around 5 p.m., workers will release about 5,000 rubber ducks into the Delaware & Raritan Canal, in a “race” to the finish line. The sponsor of the winning duck will win a cruise..
If rubber waterfowl aren't your thing, you can celebrate the boating history of the river with a cardboard canoe race.
“We supply you with material, and you put it together and race,” said Yaede. “The last one to sink is the winner.”
On Thursday afternoon, the Weather Underground was predicting a cloudy Sunday afternoon with temperatures in the 60s, and event organizers were hoping for a large turnout. Particularly during the recent Route 18 construction work, the festival foundered at a Johnson Park location in Highland Park.
Beyond the immediate success of the festival this year, Yaede has his eye on a renewed appreciation for the river and its role in the city's history.
“That's what made New Brunswick,” he said. “The river itself is why New Brunswick is there.”
For more information on the Raritan River Festival, visit the Beez Foundation website at www.beezfoundation.org.
