Just another reason why ‘Knowlton Rocks’

By Taylor McClure, Special to Brome County News

In recent weeks, members of the local community have been getting creative with their own individual initiatives to support, entertain, and keep the community connected.
Last week coloured rocks caught the eye of Brome County News contributor Louise Smith.
This reporter managed to track down one of the groups responsible for the trend that has started to rock Brome Lake.
The Knowlton Rocks initiative was started by Jennifer Comtois and her two children Juliana and Sophie Dufresne with two of their best friends. It all started two summers ago after returning from a camping trip in New York.
“We were camping and the girls found this rock and we looked it up on Facebook and what they do is they put out these rocks and then people can take them other places. The idea is to see how far the rocks go so it’s kind of a unique little community and I know they are doing it in other places as well,” Comtois said.
The rock they found in New York had come all the way from Pennsylvania. “We thought that was really cool and we thought that other people would learn about Knowlton if people take the rocks away and bring them somewhere else.”
As two children who love to get creative, it was the perfect art experiment. “We collect rocks from different places and we wash them,” Comtois explained. The girls come up with different decorating ideas themselves, “and then we spray them to make sure they don’t get ruined,” she said. “Then we drive around and we hide them in places where people who are walking or doing exercise will find them.”
They started the initiative around two years ago but it is only now that it’s really started to gain traction in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I don’t know if it’s because people are on the internet more but I always shared the rock stuff on Knowlton.com so that’s where we’ve gotten over 2,000 views on one post. We were hoping that people would join in and paint their own rocks and move them around.”
The theme for their rocks right now has been all about brightening people’s day as they walk around town. “The theme has been motivational with the lockdown,” said Comtois, explaining that she encourages other families to join in on their fun too. “We are trying to encourage other people to do it as well so that other kids can paint rocks and hide them.”
While people can re-hide the rocks if they find one, she insisted that moving them around was not necessary.
As an artistic community, Comtois hopes to see more posts on the Knowlton Rocks Facebook page of families getting involved as people become more aware. “We would like to have more people actually individually posting on Knowlton Rocks and to actually post on the Facebook page. It would be really fun if the family could do it. We have so many artists in town so it would be really fun if other people did the rocks and posted about them. It makes us happy when people find them and post about them.”
While they originally started the initiative to see how far their rocks could get, these days it’s really just to give people something to do and bring the community together. “We started it to see how far the rocks could go because it was cool we found one such so far away but at this point in time it really gave the kids an activity to do; kind of like the rainbow’s in the windows and the social distancing Easter Egg hunt. We are doing things that will help us stick together as community and take pride in our community so that’s why we did it.”
As for the name ‘Knowlton Rocks’, you could call it a play on words. “People really love this community and we wanted people to have pride in their community so the whole idea of Knowlton Rocks is that Knowlton is cool.”
Anyone interested in taking part in the Knowlton Rocks initiative can post to https://www.facebook.com/Knowlton-Rocks-218418398867427/.

Published in the April 28 edition of the Brome County News.

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