It was a hot weekend for country music at the Hawkesbury’s Country Blues Festival.

The weather for the July 24 weekend was sunny and very warm for Hawkesbury`s annual country music festival and that meant a good audience turnout at the Place des Pionniers.

“It was very good,” said Yves Paquette, one of the co-founders of the annual music festival. “There was a lot of people coming and going. I believe we had more people this year than before.”

Paquette and Andre Chamaillard launched the annual country music festival to provide residents and visitors to Hawkesbury another reason to patronize the downtown area, and also help develop the municipality`s tourism sector.

Both Paquette and Chamaillard have been involved with lobbying for municipal council`s support of the festival during their terms as councillors. They are both stepping down now from council and not running for reelection in October, but Paquette indicated he would be willing to continue as one of the festival`s official representatives to council.

“I wouldn`t mind doing it,” he said.