December 21 and 22. Christmas Concert at Chelsea School beginning at 9:15 a.m. Singing and dancing by the school’s students.   Open to parents: there is a limit of 2 tickets per family. 

December 22.  Christmas Concert at Queen Elizabeth  School, Kazabazua. Starts at 1 pm. The concert is open to parents and families of the school’s students.  It will display the school choir’s singing talents, and classes will perform plays and recitations in celebration of Christmas.

Musical Events at the Legion. Artists with links to our region playing at the Aylmer Legion Hall, 59 Bancroft, Aylmer Sector, Gatineau.  Thursday evenings. 
December  23.  Al Visser, originally from Aylmer. Membership not required.  Proceeds in support of the Aylmer Legion.
Full meal at 6.00 pm. Cost: $6.00 per person. Entertainment at 7.30 pm.
For information call: (819) 684-7063.

December 31. 
New Year’s Eve.  Fiftymen, country group from Wakefield at the Black Sheep Inn.  In the same show: Ukraina and HiLo Trons.The Black Sheep Inn’s evening shows start between 8:30 and 9:30 pm.
Advance tickets $15.00, from Compact Music, 134 Bank Street, Ottawa – Tel: (613) 233-7626 or 785 ½  Bank Street, Ottawa – Tel: (613) 233-8922, or from Ottawa Folklore Centre 1111 Bank Street, Ottawa – Tel: (613) 730-2887.
Tickets also available from the Black Sheep Inn, 753 Riverside Drive, Wakefield. 
Tel:819-459-3228.  Tickets can be reserved with a MasterCard payment by telephone
your name will then be added to our "guest list" and you should present yourself before show-time to help prevent delays at the cash.

Until January 3, 2005. Second exhibition of puppets by local children at the Aylmer Library. Once again, Ilse-Marie Gates has been conducting a course on making and performing with puppets at the Lucy Faris Library in Aylmer (see Archive, at June 25, for our entry about the previous course and exhibition.  During the fall a class of eight students have been learning how to make finger puppets and puppets constructed with cooking spoons.  The spoon puppets, which can be seen in the right-hand picture, were used to practice putting on two little plays based on the stories of Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel.  
With the assistance of her husband Noel Gates, Mrs. Gates has undertaken this project free of charge, and with the support of the Library, as a service to the community. The class has been open both to Francophone and to Anglophone children. Their parents have helped to make it a success by contributing material.
Mrs. Gates hopes that, both in Aylmer and elsewhere in the region, her activity will help to stir interest in puppetry, an art which opens up unlimited possibilities of creation, at little cost, for both children and adults. It also offers a wonderfully flexible tool to teachers and to communicators.
It is planned to run another course, for ten weeks beginning Saturday, January 15, for children aged 10 to 12.  For information call: Ilse-Marie Gates at (819) 684-0846.