When Miguel Zamora Sanchez first arrived in Toronto after moving from his native Mexico, he was immediately struck by the city’s diversity. “The first weekend I was here it was the gay pride parade,” says the 23-year-old student. “And that same day I saw a jazz festival – it was spread out through the entire city.”
It may all have been new to Sanchez at the time, but for anyone who has lived in Canada for a while none of it would have come as a surprise. Canadians have a long history of celebrating arts and culture and can lay claim to some of the coolest festivals in the world. Take the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which began in 1976 and attracted more than 30,000 attendees in its inaugural year. It is now one of the film industry’s highest-profile events (considered by many in Hollywood to be second only to Cannes in terms of headline premiere screenings and star power) and one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world – last year more than 400,000 people made it to at least one of the 397 films from 83 different countries that were shown.
Piers Handling, director and CEO of TIFF, believes the city’s diverse, multicultural population is the spine of the festival’s success. Despite the many A-listers that flock to the city every autumn for the festival – bringing the eyes of the world with them – TIFF stays hip because of the people that call Toronto their home year-round.
“What makes the festival cool is the public,” says Handling. “It’s a very warm, welcoming and diverse public. They’re not judgemental. They’re very, very open. They’re not cynical. They’re incredibly curious. So many film-makers have said that it’s the best public to show their film to for the first time.”
That openness and cultural savvy isn’t just limited to film, either. Five years ago, Field Trip, an annual summer music festival that hosts approximately 10,000 visitors a day at historic Fort York in downtown Toronto, was launched. While it can be difficult for a new festival to find its footing with so many other competing brands and approaches, Field Trip has thrived because it aims to welcome a broad demographic.
Aaron Miller, Field Trip’s co-director, understands that running a successful event isn’t just about appealing to younger tastemakers.
“One of the strengths of the festival is that it’s very community focused,” he says. “I think, most importantly, it’s family focused.”
Field Trip has brought celebrated acts such as the National and Phoenix – as well as homegrown talents Broken Social Scene and Feist – to Fort York, but still strives to curate a programme that appeals to all ages, which means having dedicated stages for kids’ entertainment.
Held over two days in June, Field Trip has learned even more about its audience over the past few years, according to Miller, and will continue to celebrate the diversity of the city it calls home.
“It’s the diversity and the inclusiveness,” Miller says of what makes the festival “cool.” “Those are obviously buzzwords that are associated with Toronto. No place is perfect and this city, like many others, has a lot of work to do. But, ultimately, Toronto does do a pretty good job of celebrating diversity. That ethos is what Field Trip really grabs on to.”
Hundreds of miles away from Toronto, the port city of Halifax has become a hub of creativity. Once called Seattle of the North for its thriving grunge scene in the early 90s, the Nova Scotia capital now prides itself on attracting a wide variety of creative types.
“We’re a real hub for artists and left-wing thinkers and people that want to express themselves,” says James Boyle, executive director of Halifax Pop Explosion, a multiday music festival and conference celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
Boyle describes Halifax as “a melting pot of different perspectives, ideas and communities” and lauds the rich history of the African Nova Scotian community, the strength of its First Peoples community and high student population as the principle sources of this distinct outlook. “It’s a hub for ideas and music to flourish,” he says. “That’s why we have so many different genres of music. The city has become that place where people can come and speak their mind and push their ideas forward.”
And it’s the festival-goers who reap the rewards of this freewheeling, inclusive approach, with some of the coolest and most critically acclaimed artists on display. This year alone, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Japandroids, Clairemont The Second and Weaves all play the October festival.
“It’s really about keeping our ears to the ground and paying attention,” says Boyle. “And lately it’s about getting out of our own circle and finding people we’re not necessarily close with. More artists from different backgrounds have a chance to play the festival.”
Few festivals around the world can lay claim to the kind of heavy-hitting programmme that one of Canada’s largest music festivals, Festival d’ete in Quebec City, can offer. This year, it celebrated its 50th anniversary and continues to set the standard in festival programming and accessibility.
Spread out over 11 days, Festival d’ete has hosted the Rolling Stones, Metallica, Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga in the past four years alone. Hundreds of artists play the festival every year and attendees can see it all for a great price: festival passes began at only C$95 (£57) this year. But despite the monumental acts that the festival attracts, Luci Tremblay, communications director at Festival d’ete, echoes Handling’s belief that the home audience is the most integral part of the festival’s success.
“The people of Quebec make Festival d’ete cool because the people of Quebec are cool,” she says. “The festival belongs to them, they are defending it, they love it. Summer here is short. It’s not always warm. So the people of Quebec, as soon as it gets warm, they want to get out. So they add that spirit to the festival and that’s what makes it unique.”
Festival d’ete speaks to everything that encompasses Canadian cool: a huge festival, which has over time hosted many of the music world’s biggest names, that retains the understated ethos of providing a great festival for an equally great city.
“The artists are discovering something,” Tremblay says of the many big names who have played the festival. “When they arrive, they discover how big the festival is and they see the huge stage we have on the Plains of Abraham, which can hold up to 100,000 people – I remember Billy Joel saying that he’d been doing this job for 50 years and he wondered why he’d never come here. It’s always a discovery like that.”
But it’s not just Canada’s plethora of festivals and voracious appetite for arts and culture that has made the country one of the coolest on the planet – after all, if Canada is indeed cool, it has to have something to do with the Canadians themselves.
“What makes Canada cool right now is the sheer fact that it’s a multi-ethnic, diverse society that seems to be working,” said Handling. “The prime minister sends an image of a very progressive society that embraces a lot of things. It seems to be pretty confidently settled right now as a place that’s comfortable in its skin without having a really strong sense of identity. It can actually embrace many identities. A lot of people feel that when they come here: they don’t have to change who they are.”
For more information and inspiration, see explore-canada.co.uk
