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Canal festival and rally in 2009!

A major European canal rendez-vous has now been fixed. For the week-end of 19-20 September 2009, the canalised river Marque, the Roubaix and Espierres Canals will be re-opened to navigation. The long-awaited return of boats will be celebrated from one end to the other of the Deûle-Scheldt link.

Partners are actively preparing the major event – announced since early 2006 – which will mark completion of the Blue Links programme of restoration works.

The main festival site and rally will be the summit level of the canal in the Union district (in Roubaix and Tourcoing), but all the communes – as well as the associations which campaigned for 20 years to preserve the canal – will be mobilised to organise off-site initiatives and events throughout the 30 km of canal, to make sure that it will be a party to remember, from Marquette to Spiere-Helkijn.

This Newsletter gives a preview of the programme for the festival, in which the rally of boats of all kinds, from many different countries, will be the main attraction, all the more so in that no such event has ever been held within the Eurometropolis Lille-Courtrai-Tournai. 

In the meantime, the Blue Links partners wish all readers and subscribers a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

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The former lock-cottage – future canal control centre – stands like a sentinel guarding Union lock, which has been operational again for more than a year. All around it, the Union regeneration site lends itself perfectly to organisation of a canal festival like those organised by the IWA in England since 1950. Photo © Daniel Herlent