It was a rainy morning but the wet stuff did not put a damper on the celebrations in front of City Hall today.
Franco-Ontarians young and old, gathered to sing and dance in celebration of Franco-Ontarian Day which is September 25th.
Dave Dupuis was there with his family. His father Michel, created the green and white Franco-Ontarian flag in a Laurentian University class back in 1975 with help of history professor Gaetan Gervais.
Officials with Centre culturel Les Compagnons des francs loisirs, Caisse populaire Alliance along with the two local French school boards e Conseil scolaire public du Nord-Est de l’Ontario (CSPNE) and the Conseil scolaire catholique Franco-Nord (CSCFN) honoured Dave’s father by presenting the Dupuis family with a plaque honouring Michel Dupuis, who passed away in January of this year.
See related: Michel Dupuis, co-creator of Franco-Ontarian Flag, passes away at 62
“It’s a beautiful commemoration to my Dad and it is very heartwarming and heartfelt,” said Dupuis about the gift.
“My Dad would love it, I love him and I miss him. It was a devastating blow personally but I am happy to see it continuing on.”
Dupuis says celebrating the day without him today is bitter-sweet.
“I do love seeing all the people here. He would absolutely love to see the people celebrating it,” said Dupuis about the large crowds of people and students from the local French-language School Boards.
“It’s exactly what he wanted, he wanted to be for the people so he wanted the people to celebrate even though he’s gone. I love seeing it, I love how North Bay has these celebrations.”
The French presence in Ontario dates back over 400 years with the arrival of French explorer Samuel de Champlain to Ontario in 1615. Today, we see nearly 612,000 francophone people living in Ontario and, outside of Quebec, Ontario has the largest francophone community in Canada.
