Owl Acoustic Lounge Steve Foord has been learning new technology while the popular live music  venue is closed due to Covid 19.
 He featured a live broadcast of Shaela Miller and Skinny Dyck last week, April 4.

 “I recorded it at my  house. It’s set up with different rooms so we can still social distance. I just tried it on a trial basis,” he said, adding the concert is available on the Owl Acoustic Lounge’s Facebook pages and has drawn close to 4,500 viewers since.

“ It took some time to teach myself the technology. I wanted to ensure we have the best sound quality as possible,” he said.
“It turned out great,” he said.

“We had 150 tuned in for the live broadcast,” he said adding he’d like to do live broadcasts every 14 days, though that depends on circumstances.
“Things change so fast. It depends on who is available to play,” he said.

South Country Fair has survived floods, floods, droughts, wind storms, torrential rain, scorching heat and everything in between according to organizer Gillian Moranz, but it couldn’t survive Covid 19 this year. But have no fear, the fair will be back next year.

Moranz answered several questions by e-mail.

She noted though July seems far away, there were many good reasons to cancel the fair this year.
“It is true that the festival is not until July, but on the scale of a global pandemic like this, a few short months is very little time. Our decision to postpone SCF #34 was not an easy one by any means. It was very difficult for our coordinators to digest the reality of not moving forward with something that is so important to us all,” she wrote.
“There are so many Fair kids who have never known a summer without SCF. We have countless volunteers and attendees that have been coming for 30 plus years. So many dedicate so much to what we create together, year after year. Needless to say, we did not take this decision lightly. But, at the end of the day, it came to down the health and safety of our community,” she continued.

Organizers considered several important points before deciding to cancel the fair this year.
 “We have been notified that, although it has not been mandated provincially yet, it is highly unlikely that the number of individuals able to convene will increase higher than 250 by the summer. This is not yet mandated federally or provincially, but after conversations with our municipal government we did not feel confident planning a gathering of that size and proportion in our small town as early as July. At the moment Albertans cannot convene in groups larger than 15 and the prospects of all restrictions being lifted by July 16 are slim to none.
    • We are responsible to ensure the health and safety of our communities. As this situation escalates globally we cannot in good faith assume that there will not be a risk of infection this summer, even if it the danger becomes less than it is currently. We are talking about the health of our artists, our attendees, our volunteers, our coordinators, our families and Fort Macleod residents. We take this responsibility very seriously, and although it is difficult to comprehend, we could not move forward in good faith knowing that we could potentially be putting our communities at risk.

    • The fact that we run a camping festival is not insignificant. Our sanitation is outstanding on a normal year, but with risk of COVID-19 we have to accept the fact that we have no running water or protocol in place for these types of sanitation requirements. We did not feel we had the ability to meet the current sanitation protocol that would garner our communities completely safe while onsite.

    • Even simple things like how we feed our performers and coordinators became extremely problematic. As a small festival we do not have the capacity to make major changes to the way we operate in such a short span of time.
     • Our concern was also part and parcel with our ability to sell tickets. Would people still come out in strong numbers? The economy is tanking and so many people are out of work right now. When the restrictions are lifted, will folks put their heads down and work for the summer rather than taking holidays in hope of recouping lost income? And what about the fear factor? There will likely be some crowd PTSD that will take some time to get past, especially with the older demographics in our communities (and rightly so). We were justly concerned that these factors would directly impact our ability to draw enough people to not risk running a deficit. Sustainability is always a crucial conversation, even 34 years later. And, if people did buy tickets in larger numbers we circle back to the concerns listed above. No matter how you look at it, we are in a cycle of scary scenarios.

    • We have received several accounts of Canadian musicians who have been infected with COVID-19 after returning home from tour (before all the cancellations began), making us wonder how realistic is was to ask Canadian artists to travel to us, or if they would even want to as the situation progresses. 
At the end of the day, we made the decision earlier than many expected, but the reality is, this situation is not going to go away quickly. Treatment and vaccines will not be fast tracked as early as the summer because that is not how the medical industry works, and the potential risks to our communities are not worth business as usual. At least, that is SCF's sentiment. ”

She noted everybody who has already purchased seasons passes for the festival have already been contacted with their options.
“Yes, we have given our advanced ticket buyers the option to either request a full refund, carry their ticket over to 2021, or donate their ticket cost to the SCF Association. All the ticket purchasers have been contacted and given instructions on how to proceed. They can communicate their preferred option by responding to  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,” she advised.

The 19th anniversary ATB Rotary Dragon Boat has been the latest Covid- 19 casualty. However festival chair Dan Westhora hopes the work the four local rotary clubs and numerous volunteers have already  put into the event, originally scheduled for June 26-28, will lead to a bigger and better 20th Anniversary festival next year.

“We’ve been following Corvid 19 news since January and set a do or die date by mid April. We wanted to postpone the cancellation as long as possible,” Westhora  said, adding a number of reasons played into the decision to cancel this year’s event. The festival draws 1,500 athletes and, depending on the weather, between 15-20,000 people visiting over the weekend to see the races,  listen to a lot of live music and enjoy food trucks and vendors.

“A lot of money comes to the city because of the festival. But we’d rather everybody walk away happy and healthy after the festival,” he continued, adding part of the reason they cancelled is because the deadline for vendors to submit their deposits is also in April.

 Another reason is several teams travel the summer dragon boat circuit, some communities having cancelled their races already.
“Last year we had 68 teams and 40 of them travel. Some do the entire circuit, others only go to a few of them. We were talking to Edmonton and they’re likely to cancel their festival,” he said.

They were expecting 17 food vendors and an additional 13 or 14 selling merch. The deadline to  get involved with the festival was mid April.

 Westhora, who is also a member of the Mosaic Rotary Club, noted the cancellation also affects local rotary clubs.
“The festival raises a lot of money for the clubs, though that isn’t why we do it,” he said adding local service clubs including Rotary, but also other clubs including Kinsmen and Lions, clubs are thinking out of the box and thinking of new ways to work in the community.

Covid -19 concert cancellations are continuing into the summer.
Over the weekend,  the Rotary Dragon boat Festival announced on their Twitter account, that the 2020 festival, scheduled for June 26-28 has been cancelled for this summer. Crews and vendors  registered will be contacted about refunds.

 Today, the South Country Fair announced South Country Fair #34 will not go on for 2020. It has postponed  until 2021. According to the South Country Fair website,  it is a temporary measure. Organizers are hoping some of the same artists will be available.