118 Montreal students safe near Boston, still plan to perform in music festival

The Boston bombings haven’t changed the plans for 118 Montreal-area high school students to compete in a music festival just outside the city this weekend.

The students, members of three bands from suburban Beaconsfield High School, are continuing to practice for the event at a hotel outside the area currently locked down.

Suanne Stein Day, the chair of the Lester B. Pearson School Board, says the students are in a hotel in Danvers, a suburb several dozen kilometres northeast of Boston.

She adds that the students’ parents have been consulted and a decision was made to carry on with plans to participate in the event.

A website has been set up for the parents, and the students have been in contact by cellphone.

Stein Day says the music competition brings together students from all over the U.S. and Canada. In the meantime, she says, the students have been rehearsing for the event and enjoying the water park inside the hotel compound.