It’s that time of year again. The time when Cape Breton shows off its most magnificent Fall colours and welcome visitors from near and far to the annual Celtic Colours International Festival! If you are one of the lucky ones who will be in Cape Breton for the Festival, we are thrilled that you decided to share this annual celebration with us. Whether this is your first time or a return visit, we want to make sure this is your best Celtic Colours experience yet.

In my last blog I told you about the Celtic Colours Festival Club. While you never know exactly what might happen on any given night at the Club, there has been one constant every night since the beginning in 1997. That constant is also the glue that holds the club together, host T.R. Buddy MacDonald.

My Father used to use the term, “A Pig In a Poke” to warn me to always carefully examine something before I bought it to be sure of its value. An example would be taking a used car for a test drive before buying it. Sage advice from my Dad.

How then, does this explain people lining up to pay $20 to attend an entertainment event where they don’t even know who is going to perform that night? This has been happening for 15 years at the Festival Club of the Celtic Colours International Festival.

I made my first trip to Scotland in January of 1996. The purpose of the visit was to conduct research at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow. My business partner and I had hatched the idea to create what would become the Celtic Colours International Festival in Cape Breton. We wanted to see a large Celtic festival in action and Celtic Connections, although only in its third year of existence, was already a huge event spanning almost three weeks in length.