August 15, 2010

When I told people that the best weekend of the year invariably happens for me in my hometown at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, I didn't honestly expect that anyone would actually want to make the trip. This year, as things went, three of my fellow SB staffers made the long pilgrimage across three provinces to the vast fields and valleys of Alberta to take in a few sights and partake in quite possibly one of the greatest examples of the Canadian spirit that I could ever think of. Having been there for a few weeks already, I was well settled back into the habits of inhabiting the city in which I dwelled for my first nineteen years and never since I had moved to Toronto had anyone ever wanted to come to Edmonton of all places to scope out the scene. I was really surprised to see how much they enjoyed the place. The level of enthusiasm that Karen, Ted and Patrick showed for the sixth-largest city in the country was unprecedented and upon re-emerging in Toronto earlier this week, they have spoken of little else.

Steel Bananas has always been a thoroughly Toronto-centric publication, if only because we are based in Toronto and it is where all of our writers live. We write what we see, and most of what we see happens to be things in Toronto. Last month, after I wrote in my transit column, "Round Round Get Around" about the current state of the Edmonton transit system (simply because that happened to be what I was seeing at the time, on account of that's where I was), I actually received a comment reading "woah. a piece on SB that isn't Toronto-centric. I darn near stroked out!" Consider this issue something of a response to our reader, Refreshed.

This issue is full of content on the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, including an interview by Patrick Grant with the legendary Van Dyke Parks and an exposé on the food of the festival. We also have several comments upon the 2010 Art Gallery of Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Alberta Art, which is quite an amazing exhibit for the new renovated provincial gallery. We're branching out a little bit, but that doesn't mean we've forgotten about our apparently notorious Toronto bias. We've got a reintroduction to the 19th century Flaneur in Toronto and an interview with local indie-rock band the Ruby Spirit.

We've headed west and we made it back to tell the tale. Here's the tale. Scattered throughout our pages.

Hoorah,

C.S. Folkers
Associate Editor
Steel Bananas