The Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival takes place every September in Fredericton, attracting thousands to the downtown core — including more than 1,000 volunteers.
Chair Mike Comeau has been volunteering for over a decade and says the festival wouldn’t be possible without all the volunteers who give their time to help make the festival a success.
Comeau says he started out as a bar runner and worked his way up to the chair of the festival.
He says his most memorable musical moment was watching Levon Helm perform in front of an emotional crowd, not long before he died of cancer in 2012. Comeau says there have been many great memories and says there is a real sense of camaraderie amongst volunteers.
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“Two years ago we had contest winners come from Halifax for the festival, and they put something out on Twitter. They were looking for witnesses for a marriage, so, I answered that and I had the opportunity to witness our first Harvest marriage,” Comeau said.
Infrastructure committee volunteer Stephen Seabrook tells Global News he started volunteering in 1991. Seabrook says his brother David Seabrook is the director of tourism for the city of Fredericton, and the event has become a family affair. He says their father has been volunteering with the festival since it started 26 years ago.
“Now my two daughters who are six years old, Molly and Lilly, they’ve started volunteering for the festival. So we have three generations of Seabrooks volunteering at Harvest,” Seabrook said.
The festival features over 150 performances on 27 stages and runs until Sept. 18, 2016.
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