WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – It’s the third time in a row that the North Country Goes Green Irish Festival has been cancelled.
Organizers say it’s because of the ongoing risk of COVID-19.
It was scheduled for March 11-13.
“While the current number of cases in Jefferson County are on the decline, festival organizers would like to take every possible precaution in an effort to keep community members safe and prevent the spread of the coronavirus,” organizers said in a release.
The 2020 event was cancelled days before it was set to start. That was when much of the state was shut down because of the pandemic.
It was cancelled again in 2021 because the pandemic was still raging and many people weren’t yet vaccinated.
Co-chair for the festival Dave Missert says organizers were exploring other locations for this year’s event since the Dulles State Office Building was under a mask mandate. But the latest mandates with the omicron spike made hosting the event anywhere too difficult.
“The scope of the event is too big for us to be the mask police. If we’re going to go do the festival like we need to do the festival, we need to be able to do the festival,” said Missert.
The Irish festival is something a lot of people look forward to, especially local musicians. Tom Murray, a drummer in Fred and the Ed’s, says his band was set to play at the festival each of the last three years and this year’s performance was supposed to be a special one.
“It was going to kind of be our retirement show,” he said.
Murray says he has been with the band since its inception in the mid 1990s and was hoping to go out with a bang at the Irish festival.
“If you’ve ever been to that dance, it’s shoulder to shoulder. I mean, it’s like a human car wash. And then to add all of your friends on top of it, we thought well this might be kind of interesting,” he said.
After three years of not having a festival, Missert says the event is not dead.
“The community’s been waiting for this for a long time. We’ll be back – back and better than ever,” he said.
Missert says he’s hoping that will happen next year.
Organizers say the North Country Goes Green academic scholarship will continue for 2022. Information for that can be found at ncirishfest.com/scholarships.
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