Sydney Mines Heritage Festival brings hundreds to Main Street

Hundreds of people filled the main street of Sydney Mines, N.S., over the weekend for the community’s annual heritage festival.

This year marked the fourth year for the Sydney Mines Heritage Festival, previously know as the Johnny Miles Festival until 2022.

In recent years, the festival has been organized by New Deal Holdings of Sydney Mines.

A section of Main Street was closed to traffic for the weekend, where vendors sold their goods and musicians performed on stage.

Organizers said this year’s attendance was the best with many people coming from others parts of the region.

“There’s also a sense of pride when the folks come from away”, said Dave Julian, a festival organizer and president & CEO of New Deal Holdings. “They’re home for the summer and they see this on the main street, and they say ‘You know what? This is the way it was when I was growing up.’ That’s kind of what we’re trying to do again.”

Julian added that next year’s festival will be a special one, as it will mark the 100th anniversary of Sydney Mines native Johnny Miles’ first victory at the Boston Marathon in 1926 (he also won in 1929).

He said plans are already in the works to make next year’s heritage festival bigger and better, and to further incorporate Miles’ memory and his accomplishments as an athlete and a citizen.

The three-day event wrapped up on Sunday evening.

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