Festival Days planning underway

After many events in Havre Festival Days were canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Havre's decades-old celebration is coming back in full swing.

Havre Area Chamber of Commerce announced that the theme for this year's celebration, set for Sept. 17-19, is "Havre Has Grit," and the Chamber is calling for parade participants and vendors to register.

"Life on the Hi-Line is great, but it doesn't come without its struggles," a release from the Chamber said. "It takes a lot of strength, hard work and perseverance to make a life in this place that we call home. We want to celebrate the grit that our community has and the amazing town in which we live.

"Show us your grit this September by coming together as a community to celebrate the time-honored tradition of Festival Days," the release added.

Festival Days was started in 1980 by a group of community members as a revival of the Havre Music Festival.

Havre had held a May music festival from the 1930s through the 1960s, which was highly acclaimed and brought hundreds or more to town to listen to the performances of regional bands.

The inaugural May Festival in 1931, organized by the Havre Band and Orchestra Association, brought city, high school and grade school bands from the region to perform in Havre.

The event became an international celebration, with Canadian bands sometimes attending.

That festival died off in the mid- to late-1960s, but Havre community members decided about 1980 to try to bring back a festival that drew the community together. They decided to hold the new festival in the fall, more as a celebration of harvest and the end of summer.

The festival grew over the next three decades with more and more events and activities added through the years, until the emergency conditions in the pandemic last year canceled many events.

The festival continued last year in a reduced form.

Activities included the annual Steve Heil Memorial Car Show taking a cruising turn with car owners driving their classics on Fifth Avenue and First Street, a street dance with a performance by Sax Cadillac, a vendor show on the street by The Atrium Mall and more performances inside the mall.

The Eagles Club held a hamburger feed, a comedy show and music that Friday and a a cornhole tournament Saturday, with the Havre Lions Club opening its Pronto Pup stand that normally opens during the Great Northern Fair, which was canceled last year due to the pandemic.

The longstanding 48-hour softball tournament also ran last year, a vendor fair was held at Holiday Village Mall and Havre Trap Club held its annual Moonlight Shoot Saturday at the club south of Havre.

For this year, the Chamber is reaching out to groups that have held events in the past to list them on its schedule, and invites people interested in holding events to call 406-265-4383 or email [email protected] with information about their planned events or go to the Chamber Office at 130 Fifth Ave.

People are invited to fill out the free registration for the parade, downloadable online at https://bit.ly/2VjJZfe , and to register as a vendor either downtown or in the Holiday Village, with forms downloadable at https://bit.ly/3rVCTsS .