MONTREAL — Will people show up at the annual YM-YWHA Israeli Street Festival on May 24 with both bells and sturdy walking shoes on?
Organizers of both the street festival and Federation CJA’s March to Jerusalem are sure this won’t happen, even though the events have been held on the same day for close to 40 years.
The events are run by two separate institutions but have been seen as one by the public, who have traditionally finished the march and proceeded directly to the afternoon street festival.
Still, organizers are confident that having the two events on separate dates and at separate venues this year – it was just separate venues last year – won’t confuse the public, and they say the change didn’t come from any differences between the two institutions.
“This was a completely collaborative decision,” federation spokesperson Howard Krosnick said.
“We have talked about it more than amicably and very constructively,” the Y’s executive director Michael Crelinsten said.
Officials from both institutions said the decision to have their events on different dates – the Y street festival on May 24, noon to 5 p.m. at the Y, and the march two weeks later, June 7, starting at 9 a.m. from Cote St. Luc’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau Park – was the result of logistical factors.
One of them, they said, was that the June 7 march coincides with the annual Tour de l’Île island-wide cycling event, as it did last year.
Both Krosnick and Crelinsten said because the tour will preoccupy the city’s police force, the march, in order to get a permit for its event, could not cross Decarie Boulevard more than once. So the decision was made, as in 2008, to stage the whole march in the Cote St. Luc-Hampstead area and not cross Decarie at all.
Until last year, both events took place at the Y/Federation Jewish community campus area. But because of the separate dates and venues this year, the June 7 march in Cote St. Luc will also include a four-hour carnival at Trudeau Park, starting at noon, with music, a live DJ, inflatable games and other attractions.
“It will have a street festival kind of feeling,” said Yair Szlak, the federation’s campaign director and professional in charge of running the march.
Crelinsten said May 24 was chosen for the Y Israeli street festival this year because “we wanted to do it a little bit earlier, and federation wanted to do it a couple of weeks later.”
Szlak said the June 7 date for the march was picked for several reasons. First, May 31, a date that seemed convenient for both institutions, conflicted with the original scheduling of a major Junior Diabetes Foundation (JDF) walk that was subsequently rescheduled.
“But by then it was too late,” Szlak said. “There’s a non-compete agreement [with JDF]. They don’t schedule their event on our date and we don’t schedule ours on theirs.”
Alternate dates were also non-starters: May 17 was no good because it’s part of a long weekend when “people don’t come,” Szlak said, and the Y’s May 24 date was during sfirat haOmer,” the 49-day period after Passover when celebratory music is not permitted. Having the march and carnival before the end of Shavuot would have ruled out participation by students from Orthodox Jewish schools like Hebrew Academy, he added.
That left June 7 as the most logical date for the Cote St. Luc march and carnival, Szlak said, while the same date would be no good for the street festival because the route of the Tour de l’Île runs close to the Y and traffic would be chaotic.
Szlak also said that even though it means having separate venues, staging the march last year in Cote St. Luc/Hampstead proved very successful.
“You should come and see the number of young families that showed up,” he said. “That’s the target [group] we want to reach out to.
“They weren’t coming here [to the Jewish Community Campus]. We recognize that. They weren’t coming here.” So they decided it would be best to again stage the march in Cote. St. Luc/Hampstead, he said.
Krosnick said organizers were going out of their way to ensure that there would be no public confusion about the two events or perception that the two organizations were not “aligned.”
“The reality is they’re totally aligned,” Krosnick said, noting that he, along with Szlak, Crelinsten and the Y’s marketing director Dov Smith, all sat down together to work things out.
Similarly, Crelinsten dismissed any notion of differences between the federation and the Y.
“The relationship… is pretty healthy right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of collaboration, a lot of consultation. We have easy and open access to each other,” something that he expects will continue as the Y prepares for its centenary next year.
Szlak said there was no additional expense in having the events on separate dates and at separate venues and did not rule out having the march away from the campus in the future.
“I don’t know. It might be a different situation –we’ll revisit it,” Szlak said. “We’re trying to make it a successful program for the Jewish community of Montreal…” he said.
“Both organizations are fully aware and happy about it. We’re both working together, we collaborate on resources, we help each other, we promote each other’s events. It’s not an issue.”
When asked by e-mail if it would bother the Y to have the march moved for good to Cote St. Luc and no longer linked to the street festival, Crelinsten answered:
“I can’t answer the question in a binary fashion. I would like to see both events succeed. The street festival must be linked to the Y building. Ideally, linking the two events would be preferred, but the permit process [because of the Tour de l’Île] has created some difficulties for us.
“If we can solve that one creatively, excellent. If not, we’ll work together to give the community two super weekends.”
