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Synchronicity Fest impresses city slickers

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I went to the Synchronicity Festival for the first time ever last weekend and I had a great time.

There was good music, good food, cool local artists and booths where children could do fun activities. What really stood out to me, though, was how safe the festival was.
There was a beer garden, people were drinking and parents were taking turns to slip off into the woods for “breaks.” But children seemed to be running all over the place barefoot. 

I’ve been living here for almost a year now, but sometimes there’s still a moment of culture clash when I see something like this and think, “No way would that happen in the city.”

My friend Pierre, whom I know from school in Montreal, was visiting me for the weekend and we both commented on the freedom everyone was enjoying. You could leave your bag unattended and probably no one would rifle through it for your phone or credit cards.
Pierre grew up in Paris and the concept of this just blew his mind. 

At a concert in a city you can’t ever leave your stuff alone. Best case scenario it gets stolen, worst case scenario an opportunistic terrorist uses you to mule some kind of chemical weapon back stage. Although to be fair, that has almost never happened to me.

The other thing that really impressed me was the Rainforest Circus. Deer Crossing the Art Farm put on a strange, wonderful and creative show in the forest with aerial dancers, comedic vignettes and otherworldly sounding music played partially on pot lids and a theremin. 

It’s not that I’ve never seen anyone play the pot lids before – I did grow up on Commercial Drive – but it was all done well. The Rainforest Circus was a huge production put on by only a handful of people and yet they managed to transport the audience out of this world. Not to mention the fact that bringing groups of 50 or so people through the forest normally – in my experience anyway – results in the trash of 50 or so people all over the forest floor. It was nice that no one in the audience – as far as I saw – left any wrappers or cigarette butts behind.

It just goes to show that people who put effort into doing something well don’t need all the money in the world to pull it off. I know, of course, that this festival wasn’t free, but the price of admission was surprisingly low for what was delivered.

I honestly can’t say that I’ve had a better time at any of the concerts I’ve been to with enormous budgets and hundreds of volunteers.

As Pierre would say, “C’était vraiment génial.”