Summerfolk

Every year, on the third weekend of August, you will find thousands of people listening, dancing, singing, eating, drinking, THCing, swimming and many other -ings on the shores of Georgian Bay.  This annual Owen Sound event that draws so many is the Summerfolk Music and Crafts Festival (locally know as “Summertoke”:)) and I have had the honour to know it now for over 25 years.

My first Summerfolk experience happened years ago when a friend offered me a free ticket.  I went with few expectations.  I was blown away.  So much so that I wrote a very complimentary letter to the Georgian Bay Folk Society that they printed in their newsletter.

This first experience inspired me to get involved in the organization when I joined the GBFS board the following year.  This opened my eyes to how much goes into running the festival.  It also gave me my first opportunity to photograph the festival.  Those photos are likely somewhere in the GBFS office, but I’d rather not find them:).

After my involvement on the Board, I returned as a Summerfolk patron for the next number of festivals.  But I always had the idea of photographing the festival again (now that I thought I knew what I was doing) in the back of my mind.  So I kept asking if I could.

Two years later, while on a trip documenting a medical mission in Nicaragua, I received a Facebook message from James Keelaghan, Summerfolk’s Artistic Director, asking if the photos on the CD he found were mine.  When I told him they were, he immediately invited me to shoot the festival again.  It’s now six years later and I am still photographing the festival and loving it.

The photos in this story are some of my favourites from the last six years.

But I am confident that I will have new favourites now that the weekend is over.  That’s just what Summerfolk does.

Come find out why next third weekend in August.

For more information on the festival and to get tickets at early-bird prices, visit www.summerfolk.org.

John Fearnall
Good Noise

All images are property of John Fearnall/Good Noise