The BZH New York association is used to organizing a Brittany celebration, but it is “exceptional” this year with the arrival of The Transat sailing race, as confided this Friday morning on France Bleu Breizh Izel the president of the association, Sophie Raubiet.
France Bleu Breizh Izel – So you celebrate Brittany a week before everyone else?
Sophie Raubiet, president of the BZH New York association – It’s true, this year, it’s a bit exceptional. We had the agreement of the Brittany Region to do so. She plays a huge part in helping us financially, so we asked for an exception this year to hold Brittany Day on May 12th instead of May 19th, just to be able to enjoy this incredible transatlantic with the arrival of all the boats. The party will be around the prize giving ceremony for the IMOCAs and perhaps for the Class40s. We’ll see.
Are you joining these two events to do something even bigger?
We will even go further. This year, we even have a historian from the University of Brest and Lorient come who will give us a lecture on the Isère boat, which is the boat that was built to transport the Statue of Liberty to New York. and which sank off the coast of Lorient. We will also talk about propulsion. Because what is incredible is that this boat at the time was built for the Statue of Liberty and for the first time an engine was put on the boat. And today we are putting back sails like Grain of Sail. I have to talk about it because this company is incredible.
It transports manufactured products from France to the United States and brings chocolate back to France.
Exactly. And in fact, it goes much further since in fact the idea is to make sail cargo ships. Now, we call them that and they already have two boats that they have built and that they have adapted to be able to do more transport. So that’s revolutionary.
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And they are partners of this Brittany celebration. What are the highlights of this festival?
We’re going to start with this little conference. Then, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., it will be Brittany Day with a huge cocktail and of course with a lot of Breton products. We’re going to eat oysters, we’re going to eat sausage pancakes, we’re going to eat Breton cake, we’re going to eat Hénaff pâté toast, there will also be Mouettes d’Arvor rillettes. We have plenty of Breton products for all our members and guests to taste. We have about 450 people already listed, so it’s pretty incredible.
How many Bretons are there in New York?
It’s very difficult to say! We know that there are approximately 30,000 French people in the New York region. Now, the Bretons are not really recorded particularly, so it’s not easy to know. In addition, there are Bretons, there are semi-Bretons, there are Breton roots but not necessarily Breton. Anyway, it’s very complicated. We, as an association, have around 180 active members, that is to say people who pay their dues every year. But we have nearly 3,500 followers, that is to say people who receive our newsletter every month when they come to New York, absolutely want to come to our events, knowing that we do events almost every month.
The goal of this association is to hold almost monthly events. What are you organizing?
There are sailing trips, the St. Patrick’s Day parade of course, very important because we really have our place in the parade which is officially part of the parade. So we can invite bagad, something we are trying to do for next year. And we also do events with the Alliance Française where we sell crepes in the streets of New York, we have garden parties in Central Park thanks to Hénaff. Then of course we also do Breton Christmas. Finally, a very important event which has become very publicized over the last four years is our kouign amann competition.
Is it exceptional to organize this here in New York?
It’s really the best at the level of the Bretons and it has become a competition which is very followed. We have eight different chefs participating. They could be pastry chefs or bakers. It’s quite interesting because we’re even starting to have people who come from outside New York and particularly from Montreal, which makes us very happy because there are a lot of Bretons in Montreal too.
Do we need to get together among Bretons, even when we live in New York?
For all people who travel a lot. Having roots and hanging on to your roots, I think that’s important. Personally, I’ve been here for 30 years. I’ve only been part of the association for seven or eight years. But, I understood that it was important and that it was a little piece of his home elsewhere. We have a lot in common. We know the region, we know a lot of people there, we sometimes even find ourselves in Brittany when we go there in the summer. So it really makes it much easier to reconnect. Now I can go to Brittany anywhere. Before, I only knew my area, Paimpol, but now I know so many people in Finistère, in Morbihan, everywhere in central Brittany, it’s great!
And all the Bretons are meeting this Sunday in New York, on the occasion of Brittany Day, alongside the arrival of this transatlantic race with the prize giving ceremony.
Plus, it’s still quite exceptional because we have an incredible space. We’re going to do it on a boat. A South Seaport museum ship. It’s the old port of New York where there is this enormous museum ship which has been there, docked for years and we had the opportunity to do it on this boat. So doing a Breton event on a boat with 200 skippers and 200 New Yorkers is absolutely extraordinary.
