Calgary’s Folk Fest kicks off under cloud of wildfire smoke

Calgary’s annual Folk Fest kicked off Thursday under a cloud of smoke, but event organizers are optimistic that the air quality will improve.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) issued an air quality advisory for the city earlier in the week as wildfire smoke from southern B.C. sweeps the region.

The Calgary Folk Music Festival runs until Sunday at Prince’s Island Park, beginning just as the air quality in Calgary was bottoming out — the index was sitting at “very high risk” as of the early afternoon Thursday.

“We engage a meteorologist and operate with their guidance,” says Sara Leishman, the festival’s executive director. “We have access to multiple apps to help us better understand what’s changing.”

“Smoke ebbs and it flows, it comes and it goes. We take in the information in the moment.”

Meg Thompson, also known as Megs Benedict, is the lead singer of L’Omelette — she says she’s not too worried about the wildfire smoke.

“As a vocalist, there’s a lot of precautions that I take during the summer, I mean this is not the first summer I’ve had to sing in smoke,” she says. So things like drinking tons and tons of water, staying indoors as much as possible — these are all things that I practice, and I think other vocalists would probably practice as well.”

One vendor tells CityNews she isn’t too worried about the air quality either, but did come prepared for the worst. 

“I’m not too worried about the smoke per se, we’ve experienced it every summer for the last couple of summers, which is really unfortunate,” says Lianna Hung, owner of Wild Rabbit Vintage. “I did bring my reusable mask.

“We did bring disposable masks just in case, after a couple of hours if it does get really bad, I’m able to switch them out.”

As of Thursday, there haven’t been any changes to programming due to smoke.

This year’s festival has 72 artists scheduled to perform, including The Roots and KT Tunstall who will hit the mainstage on Saturday.
The event typically sees around 53,000 attendees each year.

The full lineup can be found here.