WEDNESDAY
August 17, 2011
A division of
Vol. 26 No. 65
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COMOX VALLEY RECORD
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ANNIVERSARY
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NCE 1986
www.comoxvalleyrecord.com
‘Spontaneous sharing of skills’ success
TRIPLE PLAY
Big Day After lures hundreds to downtown Cumberland Lindsay Chung Record Staff
It was all about community Sunday, as Cumberland hosted the Big Day After block party. After weeks of waiting and wondering about where The Big Time Out festival was going to be held, Cumberland’s downtown business community came together to organize the Big Day After, which featured live music, shopping specials, vendors and children’s activities along Dunsmuir Avenue. Tina Willard-Stepan, who owns Seeds Natural Food Market, was very happy with the day. “It was really a very successful day for many of the businesses and a really great event with a really positive feel,” she said. Willard-Stepan guesses that 500 to 600 people went through the village during the day. “As well as being a happy event, I know it was a good day for a lot of businesses,” she said. “It was really nice to see
the business community pull together. To pull off an event so quickly and have it end up so positive ... it was a really good pulling together of all the businesses to work together.” Willard-Stepan thinks the event attracted a lot of people from The Big Time Out and people who were visiting for the festival. “A lot of Cumberland came out to share in it,” she said. “We had lots of positive feedback from the people who attended.” Musicians volunteered their time to perform on a stage beside the King George Hotel, and musicians played all the way up and down Dunsmuir Avenue. The organizers invited the community to bring what they wanted to share, and there were vendors, crafters, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, hula hoops and much more. “It was a very spontaneous sharing of skills,” said WillardStepan.
Three local players help B.C. win baseball bronze ■ 25
BIG TIME OUT
TAO WERNER OF Cumberland needs only one wheel to be on the move. The 11-year-old, who has been unicycling for about a year, was among the hundreds of people who turned out for the Big Day After, a one-day celebration Sunday on Dunsmuir Avenue in Cumberland. PHOTO BY EARLE COUPER
writer@comoxvalleyrecord.com
Promoter calls Big Time Out‘mellowest, uplifting’ Lindsay Chung
Harkened back to early days
Record Staff
The creative director of The Big Time Out is using words like “mellowest,” “loveliest,” “uplifting” and “positive” to describe this year’s scaled-down festival. After weeks of uncertainty, the two-day festival found a new home this year at Ash Berry Farm on Royston Road, just beyond the Village of Cumberland boundaries. Farm owners Don and Louisa McClellan gave up about three acres of their strawberry farm to The Big Time Out Friday night and Saturday after Cumberland
council heeded an RCMP recommendation to deny the Cumberland Village Works application to hold the festival at Village Park due to security concerns. Creative director vig Schulman says this year’s Big Time Out reminded them of their first festival in a lot of ways. “From my perspective, it was the loveliest thing we’ve done since 2005, which was the first one,” he said. “It was the mellowest event by far. Artistically, it was stunning. The feeling of this event and the layout ... it created
a very warm, organic vibe.” Louisa McClellan says seeing their farm turned into a music festival was “pretty unbelievable.” “It was just fun,” she said. “My kids just had so much fun. I think considering the last-minute change in venues ... I think it was pretty amazing.” But while having the festival was fun, McClellan does think it should have been in Cumberland. She and her husband are the new owners of the Waverley Hotel, and she feels businesses in Cum-
berland suffered from not having The Big Time Out in the village. McClellan says they started to feel really stressed out on Thursday right before the festival, and they still don’t know what the fallout will be, but their neighbours were “fabulous.” “Basically, Royston rescued The Big Time Out, and I hope the residents of Royston feel appreciated because they stepped up,” she said. McClellan missed Bedouin Soundclash’s performance Friday night because she had to put her three boys to bed, but she could hear them from the house, and
Denied their usual home at Village Park in Cumberland, the Big Time Out team shifted gears, moved to Ash Berry Farm in Royston and went ahead with a two-day celebration of music during the weekend. Performers included Emily Spiller (pictured) Bedouin Soundclash, Kim Churchill, the Boom Booms, Beats Antique, Dub FX, Current Swell and Kuba Oms.
... More photos page ■ 12
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