Events
Coast Happenings
Wherever you are on The Lower Sunshine Coast, you’re never far from a community event or a festival - and that’s certainly the case from late spring through early autumn. It’s a sure sign that spring is here when the canopies go up in Gibsons Landing for May’s Sunday Craft Market, which continues through September. Sechelt’s Saturday Farmers’ Market gets under way at about the same time and remains in operation until October. Between June and September, Gibsons Landing becomes a showcase for local and visiting musicians, who perform at various locations in the village under the banner of Music in The Landing. For more information on this, see www.town.gibsons.bc.ca.
Sechelt hosts its annual Festival of the Performing Arts in April each year, which is also the month for Roberts Creek’s Earth Day Festival and Madeira Park’s April Tools Wooden Boat Challenge.In May there are Drag Races at Wilson Creek’s Field Road airport and, starting at Roberts Creek, the annual Brodie Mountain Bike Race. Pender Harbour’s Blues Festival is also held in May, as too is the community’s annual May Day Parade and Fair.June is the month for the first of Gibsons Landing’s major festivals - its annual Jazz Festival, typically mounted during the second week of June. The run-up to the festival, however, starts a week or so earlier with performances around the village in what’s become known as Pre-Jazz Week. For news and information on both, check www.coastjazz.com.
Gibsons also holds a June children’s festival called Duck Pluck , which takes place in Gibsons’ Dougal Park. In July, Halfmoon Bay hosts its Country Fair and around the same time, Davis Bay stages its annual Sandcastle Competition. From then on, happenings throughout The southern Sunshine Coast continue well into the fall: Sechelt’s Family Arts Festival, Canada Day Celebrations on July 1 in every Sunshine Coast community, Gibsons’ International Howe Sound Outrigger Canoe Races and in mid-July, Sechelt’s School of Celtic Music Gala Concert (see www.coaststringfiddlers.com).
Towards the end of July, Gibsons is the venue for its Annual Sea Cavalcade while in early August, Sechelt holds its annual Wooden Boat Festival at the Porpoise Bay Government Dock.Elsewhere in August, visitors are welcomed to Pender Harbour’s Chamber Music Festival at Madeira Park (www.penderharbourmusic.ca), closely followed or preceded by Roberts Creek Daze, an annual Summer Craft Fair in Sechelt, more Sunshine Coast Drag Races at Wilson Creek and the Annual Festival of The Written Arts at Sechelt’s Rockwood Centre (www.writersfestival.ca). Another major event in the Gibsons Landing calendar is its annual Fibre Arts Festival and Workshops.
For Pender Harbour, The Big Event is its Annual Jazz Festival, with outstanding performances at various locations throughout the community (see www.phjazz.ca). Gibsons annual Fall Fair and Sechelt’s Oktoberfest may signal the end of Sunshine Coast summer happenings but in truth, even during the late fall, there always seems to be something happening, somewhere on the coast.
But then, if festivals and organized events don’t necessarily fill the bill, there’s no better base than The Sunshine Coast - and Gibsons in particular - for harbour and coastal day cruises, fixed and rotary wing flightseeing, kayaking, hiking, mountain-biking, horseback riding and rock-climbing - and at the end of it all, a good choice of casual and finer-dining restaurants.
