Canal District Photo Galleries

On Saturday, November 1st, Union Station Garage will be the host of the 3rd Annual CanalFest.  The event will be held on Franklin Street from 11am-5pm.  Along with crafts, local food vendors, 75-foot canal replica, and too many other activities to list, there will be plenty of performances by some of the local talent.  Here is a list of the scheduled performance:

11:00-11:45      Curubande

12:00-12:30      Gospil Choir of New England

12:45-1:30        The Buzzards

1:30-2:00          Politicians

2:00-4:00          N.E. Soul Revue

4:15-5:00          Tall Heights

The action kicks off at 11:00 am.  For your convenience, be sure to park in the new Union Station Garage.  For more information about CanalFest, be sure to check out www.blackstonecanal.org

For information regarding the main stage at CanalFest 08′, please contact Steve at  steve.kangas@ameripride.org

3^rd Annual Canalfest has Autumn Theme—Halloween Costume Contest, CanalFest Idol Contest—added to Great Food, Activities..and more

Saturday, November 1st from 11am - 5pm

Union Station Garage, Franklin Street

Worcester, MA., On Saturday, November 1, in the new Union Station garage on Franklin Street, the gateway of the fashionable Canal District, the 3^rd annual CanalFest will open its doors to everyone in Worcester County and Central Massachusetts who are looking for a fun filled day of eclectic and exciting activities with a cool Autumn and “spooky” flavor.  The 3^rd annual Canalfest had to change its original date in early September due to pending inclimate weather to November 1^st.  The Blackstone Canalfest Committee has taken advantage of the new fall date and added a fun autumn feel with new activities to the festival/street fair that we enjoyed for the last two years.  Besides great food, arts and crafts, fun kid activities and a spotlight of the storied Canal District history, they have included a fun Halloween Costume contest, a CanalFest Idol contest…and two stages for entertainment.   

Allen Fletcher, President of the Canal District Alliance and Co-Chairman of the event states, “I believe the committee did a fabulous job to incorporate activities relating to autumn and Halloween further enhancing the CanalFest experience this year.”  Fletcher continued, “The day will be filled with fun activities for all ages, great entertainment on two stages—top musical performances on the main stage, and local talent on second stage.  Combine this with the Halloween Costume contest and the CanalFest Idol contest, great food, kid activities, arts, crafts and much more…and you have a stellar festival street fair in the new Union Station garage.”    

The CanalFest scheduled for early September was postponed due to hurricane warning to the new date.  It promises to be bigger and better combining the same exciting activities of the last two years with the new Autumn/Halloween theme of this year.  It will be a day filled with excitement, food, history, children activities, horse drawn wagons, arts, crafts and all day entertainment.  The entertainment headlines on the main stage include the New England Soul Revue, Jason mames & the Bay State Rollers, Manolo Mairena and Curubande (cu-ru-ban-DE), a popular Latin jazz band, Jediah, the New England Gospel Choir and much more.  This year’s festival will have a second stage that will include CanalFest Idol contestants, local and regional artists, dancers, magicians, and much, much more.  The centerpiece of the CanalFest as has been for the previous 2 festivals, is a 75 foot replication of the canal itself giving everyone a glimpse of the past as well as what the neighborhood may look like in the future. 

Roxann Horton, festival Chairperson explains, “We expect this year’s festival to mirror the success of the last two years.  An important aspect of the Canalfest is to continue to promote public awareness of the proposed canal replication project and to celebrate the re-awakening of one of Worcester’s most storied neighborhoods.”  In the two previous years the festival attracted over 5,000 attendees.  

Since the first Canalfest in 2006, the Canal District has emerged as a “go to” destination neighborhood in Worcester.  The district has grown both commercially and residentially and has built a reputation as the “hot spot” of Worcester.  New, upscale restaurants have attracted crowds of newcomers to the district, in addition to nightclubs and sports pubs. The district is also home to a professional Latin dance studio, upscale retail stores, galleries, day spas, a pair of small publishing companies and, of course, longtime Worcester commercial mainstay Table Talk Pies.

For more information visit www.blackstonecanal.org.

For Interviews, press coverage and media appearances, Please Contact:

Christina Andrianopoulos, 917.734.9804 CAEntinc@aol.com

For more information on vendor tables, sponsorship opportunities, and advertising, please contact: Seth Derderian 508.304.3011, seth51855@yahoo.com

Canal Fest '08 - Saturday, November 1, 2008

CanalFest 2008 is a go!  Join us on Franklin Street, between Harding St and Grafton St (right behind Union Station) on November 1, 2008 to celebrate CanalFest 2008!  The Blackstone Canal Task Force is still full steam ahead planning this wonderful historic event.  This is the second annual CanalFest, and you’re invited!

With food, art, costumes, and fun, Canal Fest is bound to be a great time!

With face painting, street performers, magicians, and history exhibits, this year’s CanalFest is sure to be a great time!  Bring the kids, bring your friends, and come learn about Worcester’s history and what the Blackstone Canal is really about.  Yes, it was a shame that Canalfest was canceled on September 6th a few weeks ago, but the fact that it was moved to the day after Halloween only stregthens the types of vendors and people that can come!

Some of the things we’re expecting to have at Canal Fest 08 include

• Food Vendors
• Local Artists Decorations
• History Displays
• 75-foot-long Canal District Replica
• Face painting
• Children’s Costume Parade
• Live Music
• Much, much more!

We’re welcoming all college students, parents, kids, and anyone local to the Worcester area to come and join in the fun!

Thanks to Erika Sidor, we were able to post some of her professional photographs from last year’s canal fest.  If you like the images you see in the albums above, please consider speaking to Erika about photographing your next event.  She is a local Worcester resident and is available for all types of events.  Please see her site at the following addresses:

• Example Quality of Work
• Wedding Photography

Thanks again, Erika, for your professional photos on Worcester Canal District’s promotional website!  We look forward to your future contributions!

For everyone else, please continue sending your photos in to photos@worcestercanaldistrict.com, we have received a great number of photos so far and are struggling to have them all posted, but we’ll get them posted as soon as possible!

Worcester Canal District website would like our viewers to send in pictures of the event at the white eagle!  As soon as you get them off your camera, send them in.  We’ll pay you back with credit and links and traffic back to your website!  Thanks for helping this website to be the central place for all Canal District events!

Ukefest 08!

Even though Canal Fest was rescheduled, Ukestock is still on!  Make sure you come down to the White Eagle, Worcester, MA starting at 7pm tonight for Ukestock.  The White Eagle is on Harrison St in Worcester.  Tickets are $8 at the door, bring your friends.  Just to prepare yourself for the event, WormTownTaxi.com has posted some youtube videos of people who play songs you would recognize on ukuleles!

We did some of our own research and found some of our own videos on youtube that made us laugh.

• Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer
  
• Stairway to Heaven
  
• Build me up Buttercup
• Raining men by the same girl as above
• It’s the end of the world as we know it

So, if you thought the above was funny or entertaining, swing by ukestock tonight at the White Eagle.  Even if it isn’t your usual thing, it still will be fun!

Trocial Storm Hanna has caused the task force to reschedule Canal cest

Unfortunately, thanks to weather conditions, canal fest this weekend has been pushed back to November 1, 2008.  Thanks to Hanna coming up the coast, the event would be extremely rainy and the community would likely not show up in full force. Tina posted on Worcesterite.com the following:

The Canalfest Committee met and due to the threat of being over taken by one of these ominous storms, we have made a unanimous decision to postpone Saturday’s CanalFest. We will not be hosting it for Saturday 9/6/08

Further, you can find the article in the T & G (Worcester, MA’s local paper), the following:

The storm’s gusty winds and bands of rain prompted organizers of Worcester’s CanalFest to postpone tomorrow’s event until Nov 1. Fireworks at the Sterling Fair were also rescheduled. They will be at 9:45 tonight instead of tomorrow night.

So, unfortunately all of the hype and anticipation must continue to build, as tomorrow will not hold that which we were hoping to attend any longer.

Worcester Magazine's Coverage of Canal Fest

Pretty well-written article in Worcester Magazine last Wednesday about the upcoming Canal Fest.  Doreen Manning goes into some of the things you can expect at this year’s canal fest, as well as interviews with festival chairpeople.

She speaks with people from the Blackstone Canal Task Force, and others who are interested in seeing the canal get built.  It really seems like this event is getting a lot of press and people are really looking forward to it.  It’s good to see people get excited about our city again, isn’t it?

Visit the article by clicking this link.

Worcester's Blackstone Canal Task Force

There are plenty of people in the city that benefit from the canal reopening and seeing the area flourish.  At the heart of these people lies the Blackstone Canal Task force. This is the group dedicated to pushing the city to approve the creation of a replicated version of the Blackstone Canal. FreeTheBlackstone.org goes into detail, and provides the actual feasibility study in pdf format if you want to read about the project yourself.

Understanding why the canal would be great for Worcester is the first step in jumping on board, but you don’t have to join the task force to ensure that this happens!  Participate in our regular postings by leaving comments, submit photographs through photos@worcestercanaldistrict.com, and further support the efforts of the Blackstone Canal Task Force by attending Canal Fest!

Our primary link connects to the award-winning Free the Blackstone feasibility study, which was commissioned to examine the concept of “daylighting” the subterreanean, 150 year old canal. The study proposes a linked series of proposals for re-creating and re-interpreting two of the city’s most significant natural and historic resources: The Mill Brook and the Blackstone Canal.

The above quote was taken directly from the Blackstone Canal Task Force’s website.  The group of people who are running this task force would like to see the city’s history come back alive.  We encourage you to visit FreeTheBlackstone.org to see why Worcester business owners and citizens of Worcester alike would benefit from the canal’s existence.

R.I.P Tiny Tim

Thanks to WormTownTaxi.com for bringing this to our attention, the White Eagle is having Ukefest ‘08 on Saturday, September 6th, right after Canal Fest!  I’ve never seen someone play the ukulele in person, so after Canalfest we might actually head over to see it!

While we know nothing about it, and honestly the website doesn’t give much more information, it’s definitely interesting to see what some people can do with a seemingly benign instrument! The White Eagle and Ukestock ‘08 definitely have our interest!

Hopefully we’ll get down there and take some pictures for people to take a look after the event.  Ukestock is just another reason why Canal Fest is going to be such a huge event, no matter what your interests include.

Check it out if you are in the area: http://www.ukestock.com.