Tignish celebrates holiday season with annual tree lighting ceremony

“People used to say that he was always full of mischief and always playing jokes on people,” said his daughter, Donna Gavin.

Several years after Mr Gaudette’s death, Marion remarried and gave birth to the siblings’ brother, Howard Shea. Sadly, she died a year after Howard was born.

“We were are all basically spread out with family members,” said Lynn Dorgan, Mr Doucette’s other daughter. “It was it was kind of tough at times because when you did have a family get together, you weren’t all together because we did our own thing and they did their own thing.”

Hal Perry, MLA for Tignish-Palmer Road, was at the tree lighting. He said Mr Gaudette’s legacy is woven into the fabric of the community through his children, 20 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren.

“It is a sad story, but when you look at the end the outcome every one of (his children) have done very well for themselves,” he said. “They went to university got degrees, and are all well respected and well known in the community.”

In fact, all six of Mr Gaudette’s children are involved in the fishing industry. Ms Gavin said it’s funny how that worked out, as some people might think the siblings would never want to be out on the water again.

“I think he would have been pretty proud,” said Ms Gavin. “I think there was one point when we were fishing, and every one of our family members were on that water that day fishing except for Donna because she was in school, teaching.”

Along with the tree lighting, residents had the chance to take part in something new this year, a memorial walkway, leading to the nativity scene behind the church.

“St Simon and St Jude youth group wanted to add to the tree lighting by making the event more family focused and meaningful with hot chocolate , lighted pathway, nativity lighting, and carollers,” explained Paulette Arsenault, the church’s youth coordinator, and member relations coordinator at the Tignish Co-op. “Tina (Richard) is awesome to collaborate with. We often do so with the Co-op and Parish, and we work well together and help each other out.”

Ms Richard, recreation director for Tignish, explained the reasoning for the new addition to the tree lighting ceremony.

“It’s just a way to honour our loved ones,” she said. “We did it as a little bit of a fundraiser for the youth because everybody loves to give back to the youth. It’s gonna be used for the youth of the parish and also the youth in town to do things with.”

People could buy a lantern by contacting either Ms Richard, or the parish house, send their money in, and the name of their loved one would be placed on one of the lanterns.

Ms Richard said they expected to sell maybe 20 or 30 lanterns, but wound up selling 49. With each lantern costing $20, the amount raised was almost $1,000 in total.

Money raised from the event will go toward winter bible camp for the youth group, and to help pay for youth events in the community.

“I don’t like to charge people for events, because you want everybody to be able to take part,” said Ms Richard. “We do movie nights for teens quite often, and we have snacks and everything for them for the free when they come, and they have a great night out. Sometimes we’ll do a skate once in a while or just anything. We did outdoor skates before for the teens and had DJ playing music. It’s just nice to be able offer those things that are charging anybody anything.”