WELCOME TO FESTIVAL CITY
Ottawans spoiled by vast selection
Christine Leadman, who helped create the Bank Street bash called Glowfair, has a theory about why this city is so mad for festivals.
The open-air celebrations that run all summer match the city’s outdoorsy vibe, she says.
“When you look at all the activities we have, the open spaces we have, our cycling paths, our parks and our waterways, I think Ottawa tends to be the kind of city where people really enjoy the outdoor elements a lot.”
It’s one of many explanations for why Ottawa is sometimes called the festival capital of Canada.
“It’s quite possible that we have the largest concentration of festivals of any city in Canada,” says Julian Armour, who started the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival and now runs the Music & Beyond festival. No one has proof, though, and it’s unseemly to brag, he says.
“We don’t want to be boasting that somehow we’re better or more, because there is some great stuff happening in other cities.”
But every spring, festivals bloom in Ottawa like dandelions. Most are in summer, but celebrations are sprinkled throughout every season. The umbrella group Ottawa Festivals has counted 180, but that also includes fairs and special events. There is an astonishing variety, from the large and established music festivals that celebrate blues (well, a pinch of blues, anyway) jazz, folk, chamber and classical music, to artistic and ethnic niche offerings like the Asinabka Festival for indigenous film and the Greek, Lebanese and Italian festivals. There’s a festival for book lovers (Ottawa International Writers Festival), one that features jousting (The Kingdom of Osgoode Medieval Festival) and festivals for foodies to celebrate everything from craft beer to organic veggies.
Some weekends are crammed with choices. This weekend, for instance, there are nine festivals in town. You can join the free street party at Glowfair, listen to indie music hosted by Ottawa Explosion Weekend, watch an offbeat play at the Ottawa Fringe Festival, or ogle sports cars at the FCA Ottawa Ferrari Festival.
“I have no idea why anyone would want to take a vacation and leave this city in the summer, that’s for sure,” says Armour. “There’s so much to do.”
Ottawa is an ideal city to host festivals, he says.
“It’s easy to get around; it’s fairly compact. It’s clean, it’s safe, it’s beautiful.”
The Music & Beyond festival in July uses 20 venues in the centre of town, says Armour. “And there is not the slightest worry of personal safety, coming downtown. It never gets this kind of hot, grimy, big-city feeling downtown. It’s always very green, and clean, and beautiful. So people like coming out.”
For tourists, festivals complement the city’s other attractions, he notes. Visitors can tour Parliament, check out a few museums and listen to music in the evenings.
“Affordability is also a factor,” Armour says. “Hotels aren’t that expensive, and it’s easy to get here.”
In larger cities that host monster festivals that take over entire neighbourhoods, some residents leave town to escape the crowds, he says.
“In Ottawa there’s never that feeling. People are enjoying it, it’s the right scale.”
Since she began working for the Ottawa Jazz Festival two decades ago, Catherine O’Grady has seen the number of festivals in town explode. Although she doubts if Ottawa can compete with Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, she says festivals are a key part of the social and cultural life of this city.
And they boost civic pride. “It gives the city confidence, it gives it a kind of swagger, when it can boast of the cultural events that it hosts and celebrates, and I think that’s pretty cool.”
A rich cultural life is also a selling point that helps employers, especially in high-tech, attract talented workers to Ottawa, she says.
“The brilliant 25-year-olds from Cornell aren’t going to come to a city that has nothing to offer except box stores in the suburbs.”
O’Grady wonders whether Ottawa is at a tipping point of too many festivals to sustain.
“People only have so much money. The more festivals we have that aren’t community celebrations, people have to choose,” she says.
But newcomers such as Glowfair are happily jumping onto the summer roster.
When the Bank Street Business Improvement Area gave birth to Glowfair in 2014, it aimed for a street party with an edgy, carnival flavour, said Leadman, the BIA’s executive director.
That first year, organizers hoped to attract 5,000 people, but 22,000 showed up. Last year, there were 40,000 people at the party that shut down 10 blocks of Bank Street. Hundreds were turned away from the glow yoga, hundreds more took part in a “silent disco” that featured dancers grooving to music piped into personal headphones, and organizers set up a huge video screen so people who couldn’t get near the main stage could enjoy the free concerts.
Leadman says it’s great to have several festivals running concurrently, because the “cross pollination” of crowds helps everyone. “We have a million people in the area. There are plenty of people to go around.”
Mark Monahan, who founded Bluesfest and now runs CityFolk too, says Ottawa has a great diversity of festivals but the most successful ones come from the grassroots, started by people who bring their passions to the project.
Some festivals are content to remain small or community affairs. Ottawa would be a boring city without them, he says.
Both O’Grady and Monahan say festivals also help satisfy our hunger for a sense of community.
“Families these days come home from work, have supper, and everybody is sitting at the table with their various devices, even youngsters eight and nine are checking their email on their phone,” says O’Grady. “I have a feeling we just really need to be together. Face to face, person to person, toe to toe. Festivals provide that opportunity. We don’t gather in places to just chat anymore; we have to gather for a purpose. So having a festival to go to creates a perfect storm of people needing to be together in a group and a safe environment.
“It’s also full of culture, a group experience,” she says. “And full of love,” she adds with a self-deprecating laugh.