By Tim Querengesser
Several unhappy status-updates greeted my morning Facebook check today. I'll sum them up like this: Don't say it's going to rain during Folk on the Rocks. If anyone else says that I'm going to
For the past 30 years, Folk on the Rocks -- or "Folk" to everyone in Yellowknife -- has been held outdoors mid-way through July and, from most long-time Yellowknifer accounts, it always happens to be the summer's hottest, sunniest weekend. A friend of mine once said Folk is always blessed with glorious weather, no matter the weather forecast or what the weather leading up to the festival has been like. Indeed, it's as if the gods of rock (folk?) smile on the festival. My own experience has been supportive of this theory. Folk 1, in 2008, was hot and dusty. Folk 2, in 2009, was positively scorching. And . . . cough, wheeze . . . dusty.
But back to the litany of angry status-updates. What weather forecast are these rain-scaremongers referring to? I've had a look and the forecast doesn't speak of rain on Saturday or Sunday. Sounds to me like some Nancy-no-fun has started a whisper campaign against Folk. And thanks to the Yellowknife gossip turbine -- still far more efficient than Facebook -- everyone feels the rumour has just got to be true. It's hard to blame Yellowknifers, though: Folk is pretty important. Summer here is so glorious, but so short, that any inference that its centerpiece will be sullied is like saying it won't snow at Christmas. Or that there's no Easter bunny.
But then again, the weather has been pretty unpredictable lately. No rain was mentioned on Tuesday, when the thermometre hit 29C in Yellowknife, but at 3:45 the skies opened up with lightning and thunder, and dozens of people who skipped work early to go swimming were forced to catch up on their novel-reading. A few weeks ago, with rain similarly absent from the day's forecast, I was hailed upon as I rode my bike (yep, that hurts, if you were wondering).
Back to Folk. Will it rain? Who knows. Personally, I'm with one of my Facebook friends, who says: "If one more person tells me it's going to rain there'll be hell to pay. You are all jinxing it!!!!"
