Festival of the Losers

Let me just say, for the record, and to preserve my curmudgeon street cred, that the so-called “Old Market Square Farmers’ Market” this morning at Confederation Landing Park, part of the Festival of the Fathers was the sorriest excuse for a farmer’s market I’ve ever seen.

By my rough estimation, there was one actual farmer in attendance selling actual farm produce. Otherwise the tent was filled with sad and tired looking craftspeople, a couple of authors, and an oddly-placed demonstration of metal wall unit systems.

If our Victorian ancestors shopped at markets like this they would be dead from starvation, but would be well equipped with knick-knacks and tole-painted bouys.

While I’m hardly an advocate for waterfront partying down, I must say that the whole Festival of the Fathers schedule is rather anemic.

Of the 70 events nominally a “part of the festival,” I count only 20 that aren’t simply regularly scheduled activities, like the tours of Great George Street, that we’re to be fooled into thinking are a Big Festival Deal. And that’s counting such “let’s really stretch this out” events as “Sun Protection - Get your FREE sunscreen sample!” and $20 brunches at the Delta.

I shudder to think what eager Labor Day holiday makers from away would think of Charlottetown if they decided to build a vacation around this sorry excuse for a festival.

Charlottetown’s summer tourism season is now bracketed by two tourismocractically programmed events, one a wild orgy of rockin’ out for the young drunk set, the other, perhaps because all the money got spent on building Big Fences for the former, a sort of “trick festival” where the goal seems to be to attract tourists to an agglomeration of events that were happening anyway.

Can’t we do any better than this?