Fun cycling/music event celebrates preserved lands
“Hold the Line” returns for the second time on Friday, Sept. 7 and Saturday, Sept. 8.
There’s nothing else quite like this “cycling and music festival” on the local cultural calendar. The central theme is celebrating Waterloo Region’s “Countryside Line.” This is the boundary set to protect our rural areas from urban sprawl that has been a central element in the region’s official plan since 2005.
The organizers are a circle of young “artists, community builders, sustainability advocates, and Waterloo Region enthusiasts” who, in their own words, “love the farms, towns, and natural spaces that make up our countryside, and the walkable shops and restaurants that make our downtown cores exciting places to work and play.”
The setting this year is Fertile Ground, a small organic farm in St. Agatha, and two cycling routes: one circumnavigates the full 126 kilometres of the main line; the other is a 30-km route along the Wellesley line (the Waterloo Countryside Line actually includes six separate growth boundaries).
In addition to the cycling rides, there are evening campfire sessions, stage performances, workshops, and local food and drink. Everything is family-friendly, and you can even stay the night (the $10 camping fee includes pancake breakfast).
If it rains, the festivities will move into a spacious greenhouse.
Hold the Line team members Sam Nabi and Sean Campbell filled me in on the aims and origins of the project. They represent a new kind of leadership that augurs well for our community: young, knowledgeable, confident, community-minded but also entrepreneurial.
Nabi recently became co-owner of Full Circle Foods, the natural and bulk food store that has been part of the downtown Kitchener scene for as long as I can remember. Campbell runs an organization that does research and program development for nonprofit and social enterprise endeavours.
Alex Szaflarska, one of the worker-owners of Together We’re Bitter Co-operative Brewing in Kitchener, is another example of this style of leadership who has been involved with this project from the outset.
Music is the main focus of artistic side of Hold the Line. The prime move here is the indefatigable
Richard Garvey, the festival’s artistic director.
The program will conclude Saturday night with a “folksong singalong with Richard Garvey & Friends,” followed by a “groovy throwdown” with the equally indefatigable Janice Lee & Friends, who has worked with Garvey on many projects over the years. But rather than relying entirely on personal connections, Garvey started reaching out to find organizational partners. This proved fruitful. All the Hold the Line folks I spoke with emphasized these partnerships as a promising new element of the festival.
Neruda Arts helped bring the Cascabel group from Mexico and our own eKhaya (rock steady, Afro-beat) into the fold.
Sofar Sounds, the Waterloo chapter of a worldwide movement that organizes secret live music shows in unconventional venues, brought sitar maestro Anwar Khurshid.
The presence of the Blue Sky Singers, a group of “strong, creative Anishinaabe and Onkwehonwe women,” emerged out of a connection with the Waterloo Indigenous Education Centre at St. Paul’s University College.
The group Onion Honey is leading the Friday night allacoustic jam.
Tanya Williams and Friends of the Floor Dance-Theatre associates will be playing a part in the proceedings.
The K-W Poetry Slam movement will also be there.
The presence of local band No Discernible Key on the Saturday program is worth noting because of their connection with a precursor to Hold the Line: members of the group met at Shaky Acres farm in Rummelhardt village (now part of Waterloo), site of the original “Barnfest” and the “Stop the City” campaign in the 1980s.
Thanks to support from the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, artists are being paid for their work.