Edmonton! It's 2026, and the fun never stops in festival city!
After a quiet start to the year, most music venues are back in their regular routine & winter festivals start this weekend.
(Apologies if you would have appreciated suggestions for what to do during the quiet weeks. I used up my only good days actually going out myself! So once again, a monthly calendar posted halfway though the month. 🤦🏻♀️
🤷🏻♀️
)
Here's what's on (for the rest of) January:#YEG Festivals & Special Events
All month: Weekend music to skate to returns to the City Hall rink. "Ice Grooves" has DJs spinning Fri & Sat evenings, while "Swing & Skate" on Sunday afternoons has live bands playing inside City Hall (dancing encouraged), with the audio piped outside to the skaters. Free (but you'll need to go through security for the indoor area).
All month (if it hasn't melted yet): Ice Castles at Fan Park downtown has slides and sculptures and an ice bar. $15-24 (+fees).
Hey Edmonton! I'm working on my event calendar for the month. Just have (checks) 68 open browser tabs with possible events to go through. 😬
Maybe tomorrow?
In the meantime: check last month's calendar (still pinned on my profile) for a few #YEGtheatre shows that are carried over to this week: Big Stuff, Wildcat, & Tough Guy.
Or, if you want a family activity that feels outdoorsy but is actually indoors away from messy snow, there's Farmfair International at the Expo Centre until Saturday.
Another indoor fest that looks cute: Yikes Film Festival of indie horror & sci-fi.
My best music picks for this week:
Aysanabee at Double Dragon on Jasper Thursday evening (7pm, $32, 18+)
Good grooves from ace jam-bands Secondhand Dreamcar & StoneJoy at the Starlite Room Friday night (7pm, $38, 18+).
Dana Wylie does Edith Piaf at The Yardbird for a Sunday matinee (2pm, $29).
#YEG
OK, Edmonton! Here's the rest of the best of what's on around town in November!
There is plenty of theatre & music, a rodeo, a holiday parade, multiple Saturday evening neighbourhood outdoor fests to celebrate seasonal lights, the start of the bigger walk or drive-through light displays, and lots of craft & artisan markets (some here). Best make the most of it until the deep freezes come!
1/17
#YEG #YEGmusic
Hey Edmonton! I'm working on my event calendar for the month. Just have (checks) 68 open browser tabs with possible events to go through. 😬 Maybe tomorrow?
In the meantime: check last month's calendar (still pinned on my profile) for a few #YEGtheatre shows that are carried over to this week: Big Stuff, Wildcat, & Tough Guy.
Or, if you want a family activity that feels outdoorsy but is actually indoors away from messy snow, there's Farmfair International at the Expo Centre until Saturday.
Another indoor fest that looks cute: Yikes Film Festival of indie horror & sci-fi.
My best music picks for this week:
Aysanabee at Double Dragon on Jasper Thursday evening (7pm, $32, 18+)
Good grooves from ace jam-bands Secondhand Dreamcar & StoneJoy at the Starlite Room Friday night (7pm, $38, 18+).
Dana Wylie does Edith Piaf at The Yardbird for a Sunday matinee (2pm, $29).
#YEG
Note to future #YEGfringe acts:
If you want to game the alphabetic listing algorithm on the Fringe's ticketing site, easy-to-type punctuation marks such as ! " ' and ( rank even higher than digits for shooting your title to the top of the page. However, novel punctuation such as the interrobang (‽) will get you banished to the bottom of the listing, behind even the lowercase letters.
🧐
https://tickets.fringetheatre.ca/
There is so much about this story that annoys me:
Tenants who live in affordable housing townhouses in a neighbourhood near downtown Edmonton are fighting the sale of their homes by their non-profit provider HomeEd.HomeEd, which is owned by the City of Edmonton, listed the 20 Riverdale Place townhouses for sale in the spring.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/low-income-tenants-fight-sale-of-affordable-edmonton-townhouses-1.7604488
What is the point of having a city-owned, non-profit social housing corporation if they can sell the house out from under you without any communication about a plan to relocate tenants?
Since when is 50 years a reasonable lifespan for a house ?
Since when does "built in the early to mid-80s" equal "nearly 50 years old" in 2025? (Says someone who was also "built" in the early 80s 😏
)
If the maintenance on the structures is so bad, and value of the land is so high, that it really makes sense to sell & re-invest the money into building even more units of housing elsewhere: OK, I guess. But then why pretend another non-profit might take it over?
#YEG
#YEGmusic / #YEGfringe heads up: The Fringe festival has announced more free outdoor concerts as part of their music series, including many from the geographical fringe of Canada, the Yukon Territory.
There are now concerts listed for every night except the final Sunday. This Thursday's opening ceremonies are at 7pm. On Mon-Tues-Wed next week, the free concerts are at 5pm. All other nights the shows are 2 acts at 9 & 10pm. All at the big stage in McIntyre/ATB Park.
Pencil some of these into your scheduling spreadsheets!
(And please offer suggestions of other great fringe shows, especially if they're conveniently scheduled just before of after one of the concerts. I haven't even started looking at the indoor show listings.)
https://www.fringetheatre.ca/festival/music-series/
Aging sure is a trip, with an often uncertain destination.
I still often get mistaken for much younger than my 43 years, but the white hairs are steadily increasing. As I idly twisted this loose white strand around my fingers, I tried to imagine what I would look like when that colour change is complete.
I'm sure there's an AI app for that somewhere. I'm equally sure that I'd rather wait and hope I have enough time left to find out for real.
Attention Edmonton Air Quality aficionados:
The Environment Canada forecast includes the word "smoke" starting tomorrow afternoon, so you might want to air out your home while the particulate counts are still in the supergreen zone this evening.
(Thanks to @likelyjanlukas@mstdn.ca for ensuring that I will always think "supergreen" when seeing those really low particle counts.)
Now if only that brief stretch of sunshine had lasted long enough for me to eat supper & get where I was going without getting rained on...
#YEGwx
Yesterday's forecast smoke turned out to be only mildly mediocre air quality. I had a nice mask-free evening on the patio at Blues On Whyte. It was cool enough (after afternoon rain) that I switched my outfit once I opened the door. And it was humid enough that I was regretting the switch as I dripped with sweat while dancing.
Right now, the Environment Canada 11am forecast has "local smoke near noon" but the real time air quality is SuperGreen! again. I had to zoom out to see where that "local" smoke went. Condolences to most of Saskatchewan & eastern Alberta.
(Note that graphic is showing microgram per cubic meter particulate counts, not AQI. A count of 35 is AQI 100, the point where I always wear my mask outdoors. Those purple dots are well into the extremely unhealthy level.)
Who would have thought that alpha-gal syndrome would be completely different from, but still as bad as, alpha-male syndrome?
(sorry 🙊
)
(Also: Yay for news organizations self-hosting their own masto servers!)
https://mastodon.tucsonsentinel.com/@TucsonSentinel/114999258636230101
Vehicular violence against cyclist, in Edmonton
It sure says something about drivers' sense of entitlement to the road when an SUV driver will not only attack a stranger with a potentially deadly piece of machinery, but also let a buddy film them doing it, and then share the evidence online.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11324741/edmonton-cyclist-deliberately-hit/
Edmonton police now asking for help identifying the people who made the video (and whose voices can be briefly heard in it), as well as any additional security cam footage (Beverly Heights area, early hours of Monday, Aug 4) to help ID their vehicle.
The cyclist is still in hospital.
#YEGbike #YEG
Amelia Bellamy-Royds :progress: