Flying Canoë Volant wants to transition to a 'culture of contribution'

If each of the 100,000 people who are likely to attend Flying Canoë Volant between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1 donated $5, the festival could quickly become more sustainable or think bigger, its head producer said.

"I would say 90% of my fiscal challenges would be resolved (if that happened)," Daniel Cournoyer, the executive director of La Cité francophone, told Taproot. "At the end of the day, I have to pay my artists, I have to pay my infrastructure cost, and producing in winter is not cheap."

Admission to Flying Canoë Volant is free but that increasingly creates hurdles, Cournoyer said.

"All festivals that don't have a gate admission are living in some challenging times," he said. "We're seeing public funding being rolled back — or it's just become more competitive — and we do need to look at ways in which we can create revenue within our own events."

Held in and near the Mill Creek Ravine, the festival is inspired by myths like La Chasse-galerie, which is about lumberjacks who make a deal with the devil for a flying canoe to take them home. The festival celebrates French Canadian, First Nations, and Métis cultures with art, performance, sport, and food. It is produced by La Cité francophone, a cultural organization that houses Café Bicyclette, theatre space, and other amenities among its 104,000 square feet. The organization was borne from a 1944 call from the French Canadian Association of Alberta (Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta) to create a cultural centre, which led to two phases of building in 1997 and 2010.

La Cité francophone took over what used to be called the Mill Creek Adventure Walk about 12 years ago to create Flying Canoë Volant.

Cournoyer said he's trying something new this year to inspire contribution — an interactive art project by Dylan Toymaker of LightCraft.Design, the light-and-installation artist who defines Flying Canoë Volant's visual identity. Toymaker's new work is a 16-foot tall tower that will "flash and dance" in exchange for a donation, Cournoyer said.

Spending on novel entertainment while keeping costs lean is a "balancing act," Cournoyer said. The new Toymaker work is one example. Another is a new, 360° video dome, which cost roughly $150,000. "(It's) what you would see in a planetarium or at the TELUS World of Science," Cournoyer said of the dome. "We're able to create that same environment here on our site."

Cournoyer said new features like these lead attendees to feel a stake in the event's success, but he wants to take the next step. "We've created the culture of free, but how do we translate that? How do we transition from the culture of free to a culture of contribution?"

Films that will screen at the dome include Mondes de glace (Worlds of Ice) by Philippe Baylaucq and -22.7°C by Molécule.

New for this year is an earlier start time for the festival on Friday, Jan. 31 and Saturday, Feb. 1 at 4pm. Shown at that time is an early program featuring Au pays du cancre mou (In the Land of the Flabby Schnook) by Francis Gélinas and Mimistoires (Once Upon… My Story!) from Couleur.tv.

Cournoyer also said there's a potential blueprint to bring Flying Canoë Volant's signature canoe races back to their former glory at the Edmonton Ski Club.

"It takes a whole other production team," he said. "I always say: 'If I could find $100,000, I could do it — and do it really well. I could do it for maybe a little less."

The canoe relay races were once triathlons, Cournoyer said, where competitors raced on foot to their canoes, sped down a luge-style track, and then faced an axe-throwing challenge for victory. Today's version of the race dispenses with the run to the canoe and the luge track. Instead, glory-seekers manoeuvre the canoe through an obstacle course, portage-style, before the axe challenge.

"It's definitely not as spectacular as seeing canoes run down a hill," Cournoyer said.

The ski club is "super on board" to house the races, Cournoyer said, but the problem is money and labour. The downhill course was enabled through grant funding that has since run out, he said.

Still, Cournoyer said he's grateful the festival is stable. He shared that Flying Canoë Volant has experienced "exponential" growth and breaks even every year, in part because of tourism. This year, the fête will host "12 to 15" Dutch tour operators through a partnership with Explore Edmonton and Travel Alberta, he said.

Cournoyer also said Flying Canoë Volant offers a true taste of Edmonton, and the magic of canoes speeding down a hill is something singular to the city that he'd like to see return. "I think it's just little experiences that we can create that can make Edmonton magical in winter," he said. "I'm an Oilers fan, but we're not just the Oilers. We can do other things, and I think (downhill canoe races are) one thing that we could do."