Canmore Folk Fest

On Sunday, Kurt, Tracy, Nikhil, Crisia, and I went into Canmore to catch the folk fest. Crisia and I were dropped off downtown, while the others went to pick up some groceries. We had already missed the day sessions I wanted to see (Harry Manx), and when we got there, we found out that the festival was sold out for that day. I was quite disappointed because I was looking forward to perusing the artisan booths and to seeing Chumbawumba Acoustic, which I thought would be very fun. I think Crisia was even more disappointed because she had been unable to make any of the Calgary shows. Crisia and I ended up wandering around downtown for almost 2 hours before we found the others. It would appear that Tracy doesn’t know how to check text messages. After searching for quite some time because Canmore was very crowded, we found dinner at a pub in an inn.

We decided to try the folk fest again on Monday. Kurt and Tracy went in at around 5pm to save us tickets, while we quickly went to set the long term grids. We got there at around 7pm and were worried that it would end early and that we would only have time for one show. The festival ended up going until 11pm, so we managed to get our folky fix. Crisia and I got to peruse the artisan booths, and we caught a few good shows. Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary played some old favourites and some new songs. My favourites were Puff the Magic Dragon and Leaving on a Jet Plane. A woman called Laura Love played some fun blue-grass style songs, and a group called the Compadres ended the night by playing some songs that they described as being “Celtino” (The lead singer is of Irish descent, but his partner is Mexican).

All in all we rather enjoyed ourselves. Monday was much nicer than Sunday in terms of weather. On Sunday, there were intermittent thunderstorms, and we would have most likely gotten soaked at some point or another. Monday was a nice, sunny day, but at night it started getting cool to the point that those in flip-flops were regretting it. It appears that real summer weather here lasts only 3 weeks.