North Van & the Vancouver Folk Festival

Our annual Vancouver trek to the folk festival was soooo much easier and faster. No border crossings and Seattle traffic. The ferry from Nanaimo over to Horseshoe Bay also avoids driving through the middle of Vancouver. We stayed at our friends Rhonda and Stephen’s home in North Vancouver (again). Stephen was stuck in Argentina getting papers settled so it was just Rhonda. She is a lovely host. We also got to deconstruct and repack our stuff (again) so it would all fit in our bags for our flights to Halifax. All necessary.

The festival was great. It was hot, hot, hot in the sun and rather cool in the shade. We traipsed back and forth from one stage to the next with our chairs, sarongs, water bottle, and the festival program all marked up with our picks. There are several competing strategies I have employed over the last 20 or so years of coming: See Everyone - this is usually impossible and leads me to feeling rather scattered; Follow A Few - this leaves me feeling hemmed in and stuck hearing the same kind of music for the two and a half days, bleh; lastly, It’s a Workshop! - I find these collaborations to be some of the most interesting. Only good musicians end up thriving in these cause they have to understand music, harmony, rhythm and have a decent repertoire to join in. This suits my spreadsheet mentality as well allowing maximum saturation of artists and a bit of serendipity. I end up doing a combination of all three.

Once we get this flight over with, we can finally unpack and just travel for the remaining 6 weeks. We are ready.Read more