Greenville, the environmentally themed area of Northern Lights Festival Boreal, promises to be bigger and better this year on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, noon to 5 pm at Bell Park.

Thanks to a generous donation from the province’s Celebrate Ontario grant we have a budget for the first time in the seven years we have been part of the festival!!!

That means we can support musicians with eco-friendly lyrics and rifts to entertain and stimulate the crowd on our own Greenville stage powered by Cathy Orlando’s own portable solar energy system. Bullfrog Power is providing green power to the NLFB site overall through a green energy purchase agreement.

It also means we can have Nathalie Gara-Boivin, a well-known local environmentalist and energetic community activist, travel from her current home on Manitoulin Island to speak to the crowd as to why we need to take better care of our community and planet. In the past, she has hosted at reThink Green’s Earth Day events and also at the Canada Day celebrations to hundreds and thousands of people in both English and French. Every day is Earth Day for Natalie in her current role as co-owner of the Auberge Inn, an international hostel at Providence Bay where she and her husband, Alain Harvey, offer a green alternative to Island accommodation.

As in past years, there will be a variety of vendors and community organizations present in Greenville to both educate and inform NLFB participants as to how they too can make a difference in their personal lives and in their communities. Present will be organized workshops in and about the new Greenville workshop tent to guide people in that direction. Follow the signage present to make sure you do not miss out.

This year Greenville will be located in a highly visible location in the former parking lot at Bell Park, now a grassy area, a reversal of the old Joni Mitchell song lyrics about paving paradise and putting in a parking lot!

reThink Green has also completed a  first ever green audit of the Northern Lights Festival Boreal as part of reThink Green’s program of offering direction for community events to be more environmentally conscious in everything from dealing with waste on site to their energy use. This includes a separate audit of Greenville and the results will be available to all to see at Greenville.

See you at the Fest!