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Festival time! Summer heats up the entertainment scene!

The Tall Ships Challenge 2007 kicks off the summer with the largest gathering of tall ships in North America in and around ports of Nova Scotia from July 13-23. You can read all about the event in this issue’s ‘Summer by the Sea’ feature (starting on page 10!) Coinciding with the Tall Ships Festival is the TD Canada Trust Atlantic Jazz Festival, July 13-21 on the Halifax Waterfront. Atlantic Canada’s largest music festival brings together over 450 local, national and international performers to an audience of over 65,000 for nine soulful days.

Similar to a folk festival, the Jazz fest operates in a unique format unlike most others. Artists that headline the main stages also stick around the city for several days to run workshops and perform free concerts by day for anyone to enjoy. Renowned guitarist Bill Frisell opens the festival and Halifax’s own Gypsophilia are slated to close down the house on the last night. The popular septet combine jazz and gypsy music to create an original, eclectic sound admired by the young and old. The band’s debut album, Minor Hope was released in May 2007.

Guests of the festival also include Juno award-winner Jon Ballantyne, who won a 2007 Juno for Contemporary Jazz album of the year, solo pianists, percussionists, art rockers and all kinds of performances influenced by African, Caribbean, Latin and Gypsy swing beats—all under one tent. Don’t miss your chance to groove under the stars.

If that’s not enough jazz to swing your socks off, the Annual Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival takes place later on in the summer in Fredericton, New Brunswick. From September 11-16 enjoy more of Atlantic Canada’s best jazz and blues talent.

Some of the finest sport cars in the world will take to the roads in Prince Edward Island during British Car Days across the Bridge, in Rustico, PEI. Participants in the car show, supported by the British Motoring Association of PEI, travel from across North America to be part of the showcase and this year’s event, from July 13-15, expects to see up to 200 British cars and motorcycles on display. The old-fashioned Morgan is this year’s featured model. Dennis Gage, host of the popular My Classic Car, is the celebrity guest at this year’s showcase. Prince Andrew and Lady Sophie thought it exciting enough for a fly-over visit in years past, so you should definitely drop by to see what’s been fixed up, polished up and put on display!

Atlantic Canada’s largest pride celebration happens in Halifax with the Halifax Pride Week festival July 15-22. A number of colourful events lead up to the big Pride Parade that winds its way through Halifax on July 21. This year’s theme is Diversity.

The Mahone Bay Classic Boat Festival, dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich wooden boat heritage of Nova Scotia’s South Shore, is August 2-5. Live music, a parade, fireworks, races on the water, as well as the first Nova Scotia In-Water Boat Show are just some of the festivities that Canada’s largest classic boat festival has on the go. Take a boatyard tour into the historic buildings of Mahone Bay and experience the tradition of wooden boat building firsthand. Take part in the Fast and Furious race where teams have only four hours to build a boat they can both sail and paddle through various, and humorous, sea trials. Last year’s competition was featured in Canadian Geographic!

Happy Birthday to Halifax and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia! There’s nothing like a civic holiday in the middle of the summer. Especially one marked by a festival that is proudly sponsored by Alexander Keith’s! The Natal Day festival, from August 2-6, brings plenty of family fun for young and old including breakfasts, sporting events, parades, live musical entertainment at Queens Wharf, on the Halifax waterfront and the biggest, most elaborate fireworks display of the year!


Have your fill of art at the 19th annual Nova Scotia Folk Art Festival on Sunday, August 5, at the Lunenburg War Memorial Arena in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Over 40 contemporary folk artists present 1,500 new folk-art pieces that are also for sale.

Canada’s Chocolate town, St. Stephen, New Brunswick, home of the Ganong Chocolate Factory, has a delicious Chocolate Fest during the first full week of August. Bring your sweet tooth and indulge in some sweet activities from a chocolate theme brunch, to kite flying, a musical concert series, ice cream social, scavenger hunt, a Chocolate Lovers Choc-tail Hour and so much more. Learn how to hand-dip candy, and view hooked-rug displays as well as wood carving demonstrations. Don’t forget to have your picture taken with the official festival mascot, a chocolate mousse! It’s also the only time of year you can tour the Ganong Chocolate Factory, with daily tours from Tuesday–Friday, August 7-10. At the end of every tour, it’s all-you-can-eat chocolate!

A classic staple of summer arrives on the Halifax Boardwalk on August 10th. The International Busker Festival, one of the world’s largest, brings over 20 world-class street performers back for another round of smiles, laughs, cheers, tricks and talents! In its 21st year, the festival will showcase international street performers day and night until August 18th.

The Charlottetown Festival at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in PEI runs all summer long, from June 18 to September 29. This showcase of musical theatre and comedy brings some of Canada’s finest theatrical talent, including performers, directors, playwrights, designers and composers, to the stage. The festival opens with Anne of Green Gables—The Musical, Canada’s longest running musical, celebrating it’s 43rd season at the Mainstage Theatre. Also hitting the Mainstage, from June 19-August 31, is the hit sensation The British Invasion, a musical revue that takes you back to 1964 when the Beatles burst onto the North American music scene. The musical takes you on a tour of the most popular music from the 1960s through the 1980s, featuring over 80 artists, including Elton John, Tom Jones, Cat Stevens, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin.


The Mainstage theatre will also hold a terrific concert on August 5, featuring dynamite trio Shaye (Kim Stockwood and Damhnait Doyle of Newfoundland and Tara MacLean of PEI) and Cape Breton’s Grammy-award winning (for his hit song-writing skills on Carrie Underwood’s ‘Jesus Take the Wheel’) songwriter and musician Gordie Sampson.

Cirque du Soleil will be coming to Atlantic Canada this summer for the first time ever. After 14 years of touring the world on its big top tour, Saltimbanco, a signature Cirque du Soleil show, has adapted its performance for arenas, allowing the show to travel to cities unable to host a big top tent. The show will visit over 40 arenas on the new tour. The magical production features 47 artists, with the cast hailing from 15 different countries. In order to adapt the show to an arena format, stages were raised, and sound and lighting adjusted, but the show’s feeling of intimacy remains the same. The show will be at the Halifax Metro Centre from August 15-19, in St. John’s, Newfoundland from August 23-26 and in Saint John, New Brunswick from August 30-September 2.

Round off your fabulous summer rock n’ roll style and enjoy an energetic evening with The Tragically Hip, one of Canada’s greatest rock bands, as they tour across Atlantic Canada. Their newest album, World Container, is one of the strongest yet, with singles “In View” and “Yer not the Ocean” both tearing up the charts. You can see the classic Canadian rockers in St. John’s, Newfoundland, at the Mile One Centre on September 8, the Civic Centre, Charlottetown, PEI, on September 10, at the Aitken Centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick, September 11 and at the Halifax Metro Centre on September 13.

The pickings are definitely not slim this summer. There is tons to see and do this summer in the Maritimes, so get out there!•