Emo merchants ring in Spring Fever every April!

We have already finished the first week of April. Sunday was Pass-over leading into the Christian Easter celebration. Normally at this part of April, the blanket of snow that has covered the district would have disappeared and Sunday morning services would be marked with bright sun shine and new Easter outfits that gave belief that the new season was upon us.
This year we will wait for the summer season a little bit longer.
The sea gulls have returned. A robin was spotted in my yard. A raft of loons has been seen in the river. Canada geese can be seen in the flowing creeks.
I was browsing my calendar from last year and had spoken with the people who stored my boat and requested that it be ready for the 21st of April. It was launched that day.
The first trip across Rainy was made that weekend.
I have no expectation that in just two weeks I will be able to repeat that trip. Cleaning up of the yard will be postponed. If it stays dry, this weekend, I hope that my boulevard can be raked and the gravel that has been tossed can be raked and used to fill the potholes in the back alley.
But before the yard clean-up happens, the Emo businesses and merchants will mark the fourty-first anniversary of Spring Fever Days April 17, 18. The celebration of spring that began in the late 1960’s continues forward. It is always a sign of spring.
Clarence Ducharme, Ted Corrigan, the late Gordon Meyers, Denis DeGagne and Charlie Tompkins, decided that if everyone got together, the community could attract people from across the district. It was a bold idea and it worked. The community came together with store specials and draws and attracted people of all ages.
The idea worked and today the beginning of spring is Spring Fever days. After a winter of being in doors, friends from across the district gather and renew friendships on the Front street of Emo and in the stores of the community. It has become a social event and its success has probably exceeded the expectations of those business people who first began the event.
Looking back, it was the weekend that ours sons would get a new pair of running shoes and a taller pair of gum boots, hoping that they wouldn’t find a puddle exceeding the height of the boot.
The fresh smell of the spring air puts a spring in our footsteps. Tompkins would have their new line-up of boats with the biggest and boldest always in the showroom.
I still remember when Bill Mosbeck brought in the first Lazer sailboat and the sail rose above the front window of the Tompkins Hardware. That in itself was an attraction.
Donny Foster now joins the merchants and brings his lineup of boats and motors to the Emo LaVallee arena.
Spring Fever marks the beginning of activities. It will be followed by boat shows and home shows in Fort Frances. The Northwestern Ontario Tourism Association will hold their annual meeting in Nestor Falls just days before many of the camps open for the 2009 tourism season.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher