Emotions ran high this weekend as organizers announced the cancellation — and then the un-cancellation — of Backyard Fest, a grassroots two-day music festival held in May and celebrated for its highlighting of local musicians and artists.
Typically the festival is held in mid-May, but it originally started in the fall of 2017 as a memorial and celebration of life event for Anton Lemieux, who died of a fentanyl overdose in March of that year.
It is held in the open backyard behind Sound Heritage music, a vintage stereo equipment store on Victoria Crescent that was then owned by Anton’s father Jean Lemieux.
Festival Lemieux, as it was known in the first year, was the culmination of Anton’s dream to organize an event that featured many of the local musicians and bands he played with, and who often performed at The Vault Café, where he worked as a bartender.
Run by a collective of primarily Nanaimo-based musicians, artists and business owners, the festival ran into trouble this year when the city and fire department determined that there were safety issues with the venue in its current state.
“We just don’t have the time or resources to do what it takes to make it happen by May,” The Backyard Fest collective wrote in a social media post on April 3. “We are working hard to find [and] build alternative fire exits to make sure it can go ahead next year. In the meantime, it’s back to the underground from whence we came.”
The decision was made by festival organizers and not by the city, clarifies Dave Read, a musician and one of the organizers.
“It just didn’t seem like there was going to be time for the event to happen, and it felt like there was no end in sight for us getting some kind of approval for the dates,” he says.
“To make a long story short, we got a call from the city on Friday to say they had all been talking about it and weren’t aware that we were going to cancel it. They basically said they really wanted it to happen and wanted to do whatever it took. It’s super cool. People working together to make things happen.”
Some of the complications stemmed from a need to ensure the festival site is safe, and working on safety plans with an architect, both of which were necessities that grew out of the increasing popularity of the festival year after year, says Read.
“The process of obtaining approval for large-scale events such as Backyard Fest is comprehensive,” stated Sound Heritage owner Nathan Randall on social media on April 5.
“It requires a safety plan which demonstrates that the event organizers have a site map of the event space, have plans to keep attendees safe during the event and ensure the space can be quickly and safely evacuated if necessary and [that] first responders can safely and quickly access the event space if an emergency happens.”
Backyard Fest is slated to take place over the weekend of May 18 and 19 and the artist and performer lineup will be announced as soon as possible, says Read, who encourages attendees to keep checking the festival website for updates.
Editor’s note, April 10: The article has been updated to properly attribute the authors and dates of different social media posts about the event.
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