IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FAMILY VIBE
REGINA FOLK FESTIVAL VOLUNTEERS SAVOUR THE EXPERIENCE
Singer/songwriter Pokey LaFarge strolled over to the food station backstage at the Regina Folk Festival one August weekend some years back and made a simple request: “Can I have some more watermelon, Mom?”
“And where’s your plate?” came the response from Donna Losie, a longtime volunteer who has earned the nickname after years hosting the backstage hospitality area at the festival.
“He tottered off and got his plate,” she says now laughing. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but it worked out fine.”
That’s how things generally go for Donna in dealing with artists from around the globe who converge in Regina’s Victoria Park every August, says her daughter/backstage co-host Alexis.
“They respond really well to her,” says Alexis.
Alexis barely gets through her sentence before Donna giggle-whispers “Because I’m old.”
The Mom nickname certainly fits Donna (it came about because Alexis was always pointing performers to “my mom”) in more ways than one. She sometimes acts as surrogate mother to visitors and VIPs alike. She’s also part of a big family that comes together every summer to put on one of Western Canada’s biggest music festivals.
Such it is for many of the 800-strong army of volunteers (including the 650-plus needed for the summer festival and year-round volunteers like those who work the RFF concert series and Winterruption) that makes things run for the Regina Folk Festival, the 47th version of which takes place Friday to Sunday in Victoria Park.
“We work well together and we enjoy time together so getting to do anything together appeals to us,” Alexis says when asked about their reasons for coming back year after year almost a decade into their Folk Festival volunteer life.
“And we’ve been given this opportunity to develop this community in that backstage. We’ve got volunteers who’ve been with us for every year. We’ve set the bar high that we have a good service and we want to make Regina proud in doing that.”
Wayne Hanna has been a part of that volunteer family for so long he’s stopped trying to remember exactly how long it has been. He first volunteered back in the late 1970s when the festival was still in its infancy and, after a hiatus, has been leading the security team for 15 of the past 17 years.
His is the largest team at some 200 people and has possibly the dirtiest job there is (after all, $60,000 worth of booze is sold over the weekend and, while mellower than many large events, some patrons do get out of hand).
But Hanna wouldn’t have it any other way. He keeps telling himself he’ll walk away from it soon, but never quite finds the time.
“My objective over the last five years has been to work myself out of the job,” he says. “So at some point I’ve got to say I’ve been successful at my objective. But so far … I think my team is ready, but I’m not quite ready to go. I like it too much.”
After his time away from the Folk Festival, nearly 20 years ago (give or take) Hanna was feeling in a funk and watching too much TV. He was listening to The Cure one day and the song Gone came on.
Oh you know how it is
Wake up feeling blue
And everything that could be wrong is
Including you
Black clouds and rain and pain in your head
And all you want to do is stay in bed But if you do that you’ll be missing the world Because it doesn’t stop turning whatever you heard
If you do that you’ll be missing the world You have to get up get out and get gone
“I decided ‘That’s it: I’m not sitting on the couch anymore,’ ” says Hanna. “Friends of mine were volunteering for the Folk Festival so I volunteered too.”
Not a day has gone by where he didn’t know that was the right choice. He has seen hundreds of artists come through Victoria Park in his time with the festival, but it’s rarely those moments he remembers so much.
Friends of mine were volunteering for the Folk Festival so I volunteered too. —Wayne Hanna