Moncton Highland Games welcomes thousands of attendees after 2 years of pandemic restrictions

After two years of virtual editions due to pandemic-related restrictions, the Moncton Highland Games had its largest year ever this weekend with over 5,000 attendees.

Games co-chair Stephen Tweedie, who has been a part of organizing the event for 16 years, said the budget for this year’s games was five times that of 2019’s event.

“This is one of our biggest events ever, probably the biggest event ever since we’re hosting the Master’s World Championships in Heavy Athletics,” he said in an interview on Sunday.

“(Scottish Masters Athletics International) hosts this competition annually at various places around the world. And of course this year we won the right to host it and we got about 140 competitors from seven countries around the world.”

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He believes they more than doubled attendance with previous years usually attracting between 1500 to 2500 people. Large crowds gathered to watch as the international athletes competed in traditional Scottish games like the caber toss.

Co-organizer Jenna Morton said that 12 world records had been set at the Moncton Highland Games as of Sunday afternoon. Moncton’s own Bryan MacLean, who serves as the athletic director for the games, won a gold medal for his category in the caper toss.

It was Morton’s first year being involved in organizing the event, which she described as a daunting task.

Other than the Master’s World Championships, the Games also hosted a highland dancing competition in which over 125 dancers participated, an open juniors class competition for heavy events, a competition for bagpipe bands, as well as a swordfighting competition for the first time this year.

There were also “over 25 hours” of live music over the three day event.

“It was very rewarding to see the crowds that came out for this, this weekend” she said.