THE FESTIVALS ARE COMING TO TOWN.

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Illustration: Genevieve Simms

He’s dealt with floods, windstorms and snow in July but it’s not the weather that gives Calgary Folk Festival general manager les siemieniuk nightmares. It’s trees. What you, the blissfully ignorant audience member, probably never realized is that the placement of the festival’s six side-stages in the existing groves at Prince’s Island Park leaves little room for new plantings. So when siemieniuk (yes, he’s an e.e. cummings acolyte) showed up at the park to find a crew about to plant a cart full of trees, it took a series of “frantic phone calls” to avoid having to redraw the festival site map. Ever since, siemieniuk’s had nightmares about waking up on opening day to find a forest growing in front of his mainstage, and a bitter audience who can’t see the headliner for the trees.
What’s really scary (particularly for anyone out there who is considering entering the circus that is festival production and planning) is that there are still random factors, such as over-enthusiastic arborists, that can throw a seasoned ringmaster like siemieniuk for a loop. Over its storied 29-year history, the Folk Fest is a bit of a Boy Scout in the sense that it has learned how to be prepared for anything. Organizers fortify themselves with a volunteer corps that exceeds 1,300. Top-guns siemieniuk and artistic director Kerry Clarke have 42 years of experience between them and have seen each other through the agony of soggy grounds, toppling stereo towers, “complex” artistic personalities, spaghetti avalanches (a catering thing, one of the reasons they now cook for volunteers on site) and having the lone truck-accessible causeway to the festival site washed out by the floods of 2005. Then there’s the annual paper trail of permits (after three decades, the festival still cannot “pass Go”—each go-round, they must undertake the same application process as a newbie event). Not to mention the plate-spinning routine of satisfying all the various city departments (bylaws, health, fire, police, et al). Oh yeah, and did we mention that around here it’s been known to snow in July?

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