The « Saint-Honoré dans l’Vent » festival, held from June 18th to June 20th 2010 is a great gathering at the Saint-Honoré airport in Saguenay, central region of the Quebec province. The 2010 edition offered us many great performances with a very high quality group of Quebec kite flyers and international guests.
The organisation and the team of volunteers did all they could to offer us a big scale festival with the best event structurisation there is. The site was very well adapted for this kind of activity. A very vast field who allowed everyone to have their own fly space and a 1km long track for buggys.
We were received by very welcoming people with succulent hot meals, a high level security service, precise weather information coming directly from the control tower. Everything was well organized.
For its 12th edition, the festival welcomed world-known teams; iQuad (J. Barresi, S. de Rooy, B. Poulter, J. Davis) with their quad line kites, the Italian team Vulandra ( Maurizio Cenc, Roberto Parmesan, Vcenzo Cenci,et Fabio Piselli) with their pieces of art and giant kites and finally David et Susan Gomberg with their giant inflatable pieces. This year was a treat since the best of the Quebec flyers were present and that, in all categories; dual line, quad line, single line, handmade kites, fighter kites and traction kites.
Two events really captured my attention during this fabulous festival. First of all, iQuad, the specialists in quad line kites. A professional and very dynamic team full of kindness who were very active all through the week-end. When we arrived Friday night, they improvised an impressive demo for us to enjoy. Saturday and sunday, they did synchronized performances that just blew you away.
Two of our Quebec best dual and quad line flyers Dominic Guimond and Jessica Lamarche also joined in to make six person demos. iQuad made us feel extreme emotions by organizing a Mega Fly where we were up to 18 kites. They also share a lot of their knowledge with all the quad line flyers and manage to keep on flying in the rain suday morning. Congrats and many thanks to iQuad.
The second event was the night fly. For the first time, Saint-Honoré dans l’vent offered us a magical night fly with ambient music and a 100 000 watts of light. Many Quebec kite flyers showed us their talent with a variety of night-flight adapted kites. Réjean Bibeau and Mario Pierre with their reflecting fighter kites, Jacques Létourneau with his hand-painted kites, Jean Lemire flying three kite simultaneously, the Italian team surprised us with their giant pieces and the UFO, iQuad performed twice, David and Susan Gomberg had their led lights covered deltas and to complete the scene, illuminated traction kites.
Lots of strong and magical moments with an incredible ambience that will be talked about for a long time. I raise my hat to the organizers, Patrice Perron and to Normand Girard from Vent d’Ékinox for the staging of everything and for a big hit show.
Even if the rain stalled everything on Sunday morning, Saint-Honoré dans l’vent was a real hit, a week-end full of fun and with lots of exchange.
Let’s hope it will be back next year.
Luc Parent
Kite flyer