Canada Day Performances!

Saturday was Canada Day. For Canada Day this year the federal government had acts playing on Parliament Hill, Major Hill Park and down by City Hall for Ottawa Jazz Fest.
Some of the people performing were:

  1. Allesia Cara
  2. The Tragically Hip
  3. Walk Off The Earth
  4. Gordon Lightfoot
  5. Dean Brody and more
I was fortunate enough to get on the hill and view the performances. It was a fun time and even though there was rain, you could tell that spirits were high. The downside to the day was the long lines, huge crowds and the streets that were blocked off. 

Due to the blocked off streets there was almost no room to move and lines to get into the parks and museums were huge. When I was in line to get onto the hill so that I could view the performances the line was huge and moving slowly. The planning for the day was in my honest opinion very poor. They didn't have speakers in the queuing area for people to listen to the music so I missed Gordon Lightfoot and a couple other performers.

From the performances I did hear they were good. Dean Brody performed his hit song Canadian Girls, which is a song about how awesome Canadian women are. Dean was followed by Allesia Cara who was accompanied Orkidstra. Orkidstra is an initiative to help kids learn the joy and camaraderie that comes with music. They performed Cara's hit song Scars To Your Beautiful and the crowd absolutely loved it. 

The last performance of the night was by The Tragically Hip. It was a very beautiful moment of unity. The whole crowd got into it, even if they didn't know the song. They put the lyrics up on the screens and got the crowd to do the singing with all the performers singing back up. After the fireworks they got one of the performers, Mike Tompkins, to come back on stage and top off the whole day with an electronic/ a capella performance.

Mike's performance was interesting. He uses samples of his own voice and makes electronic music with them, doing remixes and covers of many songs. The night ended with crowd calling for one more song, but due to restrictions he couldn't. But he did give us a short 30 second beat box.
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