Sacred FolkFest Traditions; Tarp Running

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

The Edmonton FolkFest is about more than just the music, it’s about the whole experience. For me a main part of the experience is the colour lottery, a time when hundreds of people gather in a small, cramped corral. Each person is given a lottery ticket with a performer’s name on it and a number. If your performer is called first, you get to be in the first group to run your tarp. If your performer is the second called, you are in the second group etc. The number on the ticket indicates what number you are in your group.

On Saturday and Sunday the colour lottery starts at 7 in the morning, which means that you have to wake up at 6 after staying out until 12:30 am at Gallagher Park. For many people, this probably sounds crazy... and you know what? They’re probably right, it is pretty crazy, but it’s worth it! It’s worth it if after spending half an hour in close quarters with other caffeine fuelled folk festers your performer is called first.

For my family and friends, the colour lottery has become a tradition. After the lottery on Saturday and Sunday morning we go for breakfast at the nearby Humpty’s. The coffee there is pretty bad, but you’ve got to stick to tradition! After breakfast all of us (usually ranging between 6 and 12 people) return to the hill to watch the tarp run. It may not sound like much, but the tarp run is way more exciting than the Stanley Cup playoffs or the FIFA World Cup!

If we get first colour then our tarp runner gets to be bagpiped down the hill to place our tarp. This moment may be the most exciting part of the FolkFest. Our whole group stands at the top of the hill craning our necks to try and see where our tarp runner placed the tarp, the anticipation is sometimes too much! Our group takes tarp running so seriously that we call our runner “Tarparanjuat: The Tarp Runner”, based off of the movie “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner”. She even has a t-shirt with the name printed on it!

This year I’ve noticed that many things have changed surrounding the tarp run. The security especially seems way tighter; they wouldn’t even let us cheer on Tarparanjuat! Our group of regular FolkFest-goers fear that this will now affect the performance of our tarp runner because she won’t be able hear us cheering for her. It won’t matter today though because we got first colour at the lottery!

See you on the hill!

Thursday Night Photos

Patrick Watson.





Gord Downie.



Ben Harper.





G'Night everybody and I'll see you on the hill tomorrow!

FolkFest 2010, Day 1: Thursday Night Main Stage a Must-See

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

Of all the main stage line-ups at this year’s Folk Festival, tonight’s is by far the one that I am most looking forward to. Four very respected performers will play the main stage tonight.

Opening up the festival will be Patrick Watson, followed by Canadian icon Gord Downie. Next performing will be English folk singer Kate Rusby, and to finish the night off, former Wednesday night headliner Ben Harper will perform.

California-born, Quebec-raised Patrick Watson is probably the artist that I am most looking forward to seeing at this year’s festival. I first heard of Patrick Watson in 2007 when his album Close to Paradise won the 2007 Polaris Prize. He has since come “into the light” for me again after I saw a video on YouTube of him playing a great duet with Lhasa.

Watson's 2009 album Wooden Arms was also a finalist for that year’s Polaris Prize. Perhaps my favourite song of Watson’s is on off of Close to Paradise called The Great Escape, which I tried to learn on piano.

Gord Downie is a Canadian icon, and his band The Tragically Hip is one of the most famous Canadian bands ever. The Hip has received 14 Juno Awards over the years and was inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame as well as the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

I think that the reason The Tragically Hip has become so famous is because Gord Downie’s lyrics really resonate with Canadians. He uses real Canadian stories in his songs, and because of this my mom swears that the song Wheat Kings is about my great-grandfather who was the chief commissioner of the Canadian Wheat Board (minus being a killer of course).

Kate Rusby is an artist that I am not very familiar with. The only time that I have really heard her name is when it has been mentioned in the media, so I'm excited about hearing her for the first time today.

Rusby was born into a musical family and learned to play the guitar, fiddle and piano at a young age. She's quite well known among folk fans in Britain and has won 4 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

To finish off Day 1 of the festival I feel that Ben Harper’s performance is sort of a gift. Harper (not to be confused with Stephen) was originally going to play the Wednesday night show, but has been moved to Thursday night.

One of the reasons Ben Harper gets so much respect is because of the sheer amount of activism he does: he participated in Vote for Change and contributed his song "Oppression" for the CD For the Lady in 2004. He is part of No Nukes Group and participated in Songs for Tibet in 2008. And besides all this he is also a 2 time Grammy Award winner!

Tonight’s main stage performance is bound to be something special. Sharing the stage will be a Polaris Prize winner, a Juno Award winner, a BBC Radio 2 Award winner and a Grammy Award winner! So for all those attending the folk fest tonight, you are in for a treat.

See you on the hill!

No Sweat!

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I was excited about buying shoes. I was at a store called "The Shoe Doctor" in the awesome community of Wolseley, Winnipeg, a store where they sell different brands of shoes that aren't Nike or Adidas etc. One of the brands of shoes that they sell is called "No Sweat", which is an organization that makes "100% union made apparel" which includes shoes. "No Sweat" also makes other clothes such as t-shirts, sweaters etc.



I bought a pair of black, converse-style shoes that are 100% union made in Indonesia. This means that "No Sweat" employs people who desperately need these jobs and who will be treated fairly. This means no child labour and no 16 hours work days.

To learn more about "No Sweat" visit their website: http://www.nosweatapparel.com/index.html

Another interesting shoe brand that I found at "The Shoe Doctor" was "Oliberté", which, similar to "No Sweat" fairly employs people in developing countries, for "Oliberté" they mostly employ people in Ethiopia. "Oliberté" is a bit more expensive than "No Sweat" and unlike "No Sweat", they only make shoes. The shoes that they do make though are made from premium leather from Ethiopia and rubber from Liberia.

To learn more about "Oliberté" visit their website: http://www.oliberte.com/home/

The reason why these two companies are able to do such great things is because they do not spend money on advertising, and so they encourage people to spread the word. By writing this, I hope that someone will go out and but a pair of "No Sweat" or "Oliberté" shoes that really will make a difference in the world.

The Interesting Politics of Iceland

Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland recently had a municipal election in May of this year. A new political party that was running to be elected was the Best Party, whose original goal was to satirize Icelandic politics. The party's platform consisted of things like "free swimming for everyone and free towels", "free bus rides and dental services for children and the poor" and to "listen more to women and old people." Well low and behold, the Best Party won the latest municipal election in Iceland's capital city, and now comedian Jon Gnarr is the mayor of Reykjavik.

Here's the campaign video for the Best Party, featuring the song "The Best" by Tina Turner:



If only Canadian politics were this interesting!!!

To learn more about the Best Party, visit their website: http://bestiflokkurinn.is/. Warning: it is in Icelandic!

I will be visiting Iceland for one week at the end of this month, and I am getting extremely excited about my trip! I will soon write a post about all the things that I hope to do in Iceland, and about more interesting things in Iceland's capital city of Reykjavik such as the world's best hot dog stand!

G20 Protests Continue

In Toronto there are still many protests taking place even though the G20 summit ended two weeks ago. This time though, they are not simply protesting topics that would be talked about at the summit, but how the police responded towards protesters during the weekend of the summit in Toronto. Yesterday (Saturday), around 1,200 marched from Queen's Park to the Toronto Convention Centre to protest how the police and the Canadian government is handling the aftermath of the G20. It's not just rowdy protesters who are angry though, Shanaaz Gokool, the head of Amnesty International Toronto thinks that more needs to be done in handling reviews and investigations into the police. Over 1,000 arrests were made during the G20, which makes that weekend the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

I've posted some things regarding the G20 and my feelings about it on Facebook and I've gotten many responses saying that the police presence was completely necessary. And I agree. The police presence was completely necessary, but the way that the police acted, was completely unnecessary. There are many videos on YouTube circulating of violent arrests made by the police, but there was one video that really caught my eye:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII

This short 31 second video shows a large group of protesters singing O Canada in front of a large group of police. Near the end of the song, they sit down, clearly showing that they are peaceful. As the song ends, police charge the crowd, shoving them back and pushing many people over. Could they not have simply said "please, move?"

Canada is not a police state, but from looking at some videos posted during the G20 in Toronto, that was kind of hard to tell.

I also understand that there were some violent protests that happened during the G20 where police cars were actually set on fire, and yes, those are the people who the police should be arresting and spraying tear gas on. But the people yelling "we are peaceful, how 'bout you?!" should not be arrested just for expressing your opinion. In connection with my class video project that I made on human rights, I think that many human rights were violated two weekends ago. Mainly by the police towards the protesters and I think that something like that is unacceptable in our society.

My New Obsession...

I am in the midst of exams right now, so I’m very busy, but I want to share this amazing song with you!

Last week on CBC Radio 2 I heard a song by poet Shane Koyczan. He recited his poem We Are More at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Opening Ceremonies and is now my favourite poet!

I am obsessed with his song This is My Voice which isn’t the same poem that I heard on CBC, but is off the same CD and I think is better!

I hope that you like it as much as I do!

G20 Police Presence to Exceed Vancouver Olympics

At the G20 Summit in Toronto this year a "small army" is being brought in to protect the leaders of the world's 20 most powerful countries from rowdy protesters. However, this protection seems to have backfired as now more people are protesting because of the high security in downtown Toronto! A three meter high, 3.3 kilometer long fence with ring the convention centre in downtown Toronto and anyone who lives or works inside the fenced off area will have to enter through security checkpoints.
“This is Toronto and not Tiananmen Square,”activist Greg Thomas said speaking to a group of protesters, “We are asking if body bags are included in that billion-dollar security package.”
Another expense that has been causing quite the uproar is a 1.9 million dollar fake lake that will be built inside the convention centre. This lake is being built so that the leaders of the G20 countries can experience Canada in the safety of the air conditioned convention centre without having to go outside into the crazy streets of Toronto and the terribly dangerous country of Canada. Isn't Ontario called "lake country" or something like that, according the the wikipedia article about Ontario, that province has over 250, 000 lakes!!! So is it really necessary to build an expensive man-made lake when there are thousands of free lakes all around you?
All in all, I think that the G20 summit in Toronto is a bit outrageous. All I can say is that I'm glad that I went to Toronto two weeks ago, before all this craziness started, and that I was able to see the CN Tower without having to go through a security checkpoint!

My Experience Doing the Barefoot Challenge

I have so far survived the challenge this year, but it's still not over! I still have to go and see my physiotherapist tonight in barefeet.

The rest of the day was quite successful though, a whole bunch of other people from my school also went barefoot for the challenge! To start the day off, I rode my bike to school with barefeet, which was actually quite challenging. The bike pedals were digging into my feet and the bumpy roads of Edmonton didn't really help. School wasn't much of a challenge in barefeet, since we pretty much just sit there all day... gym was a different story though. We had gym outside today and running outside on the rocky, bumpy ground was kind of hard on the feet. The grass was nice though, and once you got used to it, it was fine. However, at lunch I definitely saw the negative side effects of going barefoot. A classmate of mine accidentally slammed a door into my foot and now I have a big blood blister on my big toe. It doesn't actually hurt that much... but it's just kinda gross!

After getting the blood blister, I saw how much going barefoot can effect someones life. For the people who can't afford shoes, this can actually be quite dangerous, especially in the environment that they may be living in!

I felt that through this challenge people were educated about the lives of people living in poorer, developing countries. After doing this challenge, I hope that many other teens will realize how lucky they are just to have the basic necessities like shoes.

Barefoot Challenge 2010

This year I have successfully convinced my principal to let me go barefoot for Bilaal Rajan's barefoot challenge. I am going barefoot for one day, today, to raise poverty awareness.
Today is also International Children's Day and Bilaal Rajan is encouraging as many people as he can to kick of their shoes to feel what it's like to not be able to afford shoes.

I printed off a poster for the challenge and then pinned it onto my back before getting ready to bike to school barefoot!
I will be adding more information after school about how my day going barefoot went and felt like, so stay tuned!
For more information about Bilaal Rajan's barefoot challenge, visit http://makingchangenow.com/