We protect what we love.

The annual 2Rivers Festival helps us to fall in love with our rivers over and over again.

Guelph’s river system is its most important ecological, cultural and recreational feature. The annual 2Rivers Festival is a forum to showcase and celebrate our two beautiful rivers and to engage our whole community in imagining how each one of us can become a vital participant in the regeneration of our river ecosystems.

We are pleased to partner each year with a variety of community organizations throughout May and June to celebrate our cherished rivers, the Speed and the Eramosa. With many public events including music, indigenous river knowledge, hidden streams, art, rowing, yoga, river creatures, hikes, bikes and trees, you are sure to find a variety of experiences that you and your family will enjoy. All of our events are FREE!

Our hope is that your participation in the Festival will encourage you to advocate for the protection and conservation of our water and our rivers. Your help will ensure that future generations will have the same opportunities to enjoy clean water and our healthy rivers all year long.

The Festival is a project of the Wellington Water Watchers, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection, restoration and conservation of source water in Guelph-Wellington. 

Our goal of the 2Rivers Festival is to celebrate the waters while aiming to spark an interest in furthering the protection of the waters that nourish us.

Living Land and water Acknowledgement

We humbly acknowledge that we host the 2Rivers Festival on the stolen, unceded land of the Anishinaabe peoples who were displaced because of greed and racism, the hallmarks of capitalism and white supremacy which were the motivation behind settler colonialism. Here in the Eramosa river valley, we have learned that the Chonnonton (Attawandaron/Neutral) specifically, were among the original stewards. We’d like to recognize the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples in these river valleys. Today there are a wide number of Indigenous peoples who call this territory home under the Haldimand Tract Treaty and Treaty 3 with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. 

The festival exists within the Dish with One Spoon territory, an inspirational agreement that historically bound the Anishinaabe, Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee peoples to share the territory and protect the land. We too as guests on these lands are now bound by this agreement. 

We further acknowledge that our festival requires access to local waterways  that is not justly distributed across our community, and that most of us in our organization are of settler origin. It is with great humility that we acknowledge the privilege we have within the current systems of inequity to be in relationship with these beautiful waters that offer rest, respite and enjoyment.  

With this knowledge we commit to the many ways we can engage in the dismantling of oppressive narratives, mindsets and institutions and lift up the voices of the folks whose lands and lifeways were stolen.

Thank you to the 2021 participating host organizations! Visit their websites to join these groups and participate in their other events throughout the year.

Thank you to the volunteers who helping to make the 2Rivers Festival a success. A special thank you to the 2021 2Rivers Festival Steering Committee: Arlene Slocombe, Susan Ratcliffe, Laura Andrighetti, Emma Callon, Beth Shier, Heather Reid and Catherine Killen have dedicated their time to develop the festival program and connect us more closely with our rivers.