Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - I can’t take too much heat anymore and had to pack it in by 4:30, but it was already apparent that this year’s Lovefest was another success.
How does a little music festival on a remote island consistently draw crowds larger than the entire adult population?
Singer/songwriter Denise Wolda gave a partial answer to this during a totally unrelated interview a few days ago:
“ I wanted to talk a little about the current musical scene on Cortes. This is a very different community than when I moved here 30 years ago. There were always musicians on the island, but the getting together and the sense of there actually being a Cortes Island musical scene did not exist, as far as I'm concerned, until Rex Weyler and Rick Bockner did the initial and maybe the bulk of the work to get this ball rolling. Lovefest has been so important and the beautiful Hollyhock Lodge coffeehouse that happens over the winter, which gives us a place to be musicians in the wintertime as well.”
Cortes Island’s first Lovesfest, in 2017, was a celebration of the 50 years since the ‘Summer of Love’ in Haight Ashbury.
Lovefest became an annual event.
“It's one of the few events where the entire community comes and joins in one place. It's a really special thing for that,” said Radio Sean.
Hugh Barton agreed, “It's just a great sense of community. So many people come out to set up and organize it all. We get these fabulous musicians from off Island as well.”
David Rousseau elaborated, “Lovefest is Cortes Island distilled into a one day event, that's why. When I first came here 50 years ago, I admired the old timers, I respected the old timers, I learned a lot from the old timers. Now we're the old timers and the vintage is about, what, 1969, right? And here we are.”
David has been a prominent voice on the island for so long that it is hard to think of him as anything but a Cortes resident, but he now lives in Comox.
Namchi is another Cortes resident who has moved off island. She lives in the Comox Valley during the school year, but returns to Cortes every summer. Namchi was also one of the dancers in Meinje’s Dream Caravan during the first Lovefest and has come to every Lovefest since then.
“Lovefest seems like a fun melting pot of many generations and different types of people,” she said.
