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Hornby Community Invitation- a Traditional Thank You

December 1st 11:30 AM at the Hornby Island Community Hall

Jennifer Armstrong Photography

Hornby Arts and the Hornby Festival will be hosting a community gathering with Elder Barb Whyte on December 1. Doors open at 11:30 am and the thank you will begin at noon at the Hall. This gathering is a follow up from the Coast Salish Connections presentations that were a part of the Hornby Festival and Hornby Arts offerings this summer. We will be thanking the community for the support and willingness they have shown on this journey of recognition and awareness, necessary steps towards healing from past injustices and building ongoing indigenous relations .At this time there will be a recognition of the amount of money collected from the personal donations and fees we received from the workshops and gatherings that were a part of the Coast Salish Connections event.

We will also talk about the follow up planned use of these funds for recording Elder’s stories and how we are hoping to present them at next year’s festival and other community gatherings .Following the Coast Salish Connection gathering, we have been approached by a number of people in the community who are wanting to find ways to support the work that has started. There will be time for discussion around this topic at this time. We look forward to seeing you there. 

The requirements for gatherings at the Hall are proof of vaccination and matching ID (for people 19 and over) and wearing of masks.

We will be serving tea. We would ask you to pre-register for this event through TICKIT as the Hall’s maximum capacity at this point is 90. We will be letting people in at the door if we have not reached this limit.

https://hornbyfestival.tickit.ca/events/13725

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Coast Salish Connections – An Elder’s Story 

Exhibit @ The Hornby Island Community Hall

July 30 – August 7

Created under the direction of Cultural Knowledge Keeper and Pentlatch Descendant, Elder Barb Whyte (Billy)

Coast Salish Connections, both past and present, run deep on Hornby Island. This audio-visual exhibit is a recognition and a celebration, as the ongoing investigation demonstrates a rich history, living memories and current day lives and family ties on Hornby Island. The voices of the Elders guide us through this directional exhibit. Meaningful connections are unearthed, the past acknowledged, and a magnificent culture shows its beauty, wisdom, power and resilience.

Friday, July 30 – 1 pm     

Welcome with Elder Barb Whyte (Billy) and Exhibit Tour with the Elders 

Coast Salish Workshops: (schedule TBA)

Cedar Rose Making Workshop with Pamela Mitchell

Plant Medicine and Traditional Foods with Elder Barb Whyte (Billy)

A Residential School Conversation with Elders Verna Wallace and Barb Whyte (Billy)

Presented in partnership by Hornby Arts and The Hornby Festival. Hornby Arts and The Hornby Festival respectfully acknowledge the many Indigenous connections to Hornby Island. This is one Elders’ story.

We look forward to releasing the rest of our lineup in the coming weeks!

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Hornby Festival 2021 Updates!! July 30th to August 7th

We, at the Hornby Festival, are excited about many of the opportunities that have opened up for festivals across BC with Stage 3 of the Restart Plan that just went into effect July 1. 

We are thrilled to be able to invite many more of you to attend our festival stage at Rosemuir Farm. While we will be allowed up to 5,000!! people in attendance outside, we will still be staying somewhat small as there are many infrastructure limitations that we cannot get around in such a short time. In four weeks we can only shift so far, but we are thrilled to be able to do so much more that we had thought possible only a few days ago. While all of our live performances will be at Rosemuir Farm, we will still be including a spectacular classical performance with Beckie our 8 foot Bechstein piano (at the farm) and as well as an incredible jazz performance for the lovers of our Community Hall programming.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to run Art In Unusual Places this year, or the Hornby Festival Live on the Lawn at CHFR 96.5. We will have a very exciting exhibit/workshop series at the hall and a more spaced out but dynamo lineup of world-class regional performing artists at our stunning outdoor location of Rosemuir Farm. Lineup details will be coming your way soon as we are working hard to completely rework our schedule. 

Calling all volunteers – if you would like to help out this year and join our team as a festival volunteer, we now are starting to fill the many varied positions. Festival volunteers are rewarded with free tickets to our shows. Please email or call the office and leave a message with your contact information (email and phone), and we will contact you to slot you in. generalmanager@hornbyfestival.bc.ca/250-335-2734.

A big shout out to our donors and sponsors who have already generously stepped up to the plate this year to make a festival possible.

We can’t wait to see you at the Hornby Festival 2021 – now in its 39th year

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2021 Hornby Festival Status

Dear Festival Community,

We are excited to be trying to bring a festival to you this year. It is looking really positive that we can create an amazing, safe and soul-feeding way to come together as a festival community again! What will it look like? We actually still don’t know and are waiting to hear. The Province is currently in stakeholder consultations and we have yet to hear many critical details, such as how many people can we have in attendance and what protocols will we need to have in place? Do we have to be seated, do we need to wear masks, do we sit in distanced groups? These are all questions that we have asked but nobody has the answers to yet. There will hopefully be more information as we move toward July 1. Getting an approved official Event Safety Plan will likely involve many changes and much effort to stay on the pulse.

Rather than focusing on what will not be possible this year, we are working toward what we can create that is new, fun and awesome . . . and, of course, safe. To be sure, it will be a very different festival, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be amazing!

What do we know? – We know that if provincial health directives permit, we will run from July 29 to August 7 but with a differently structured festival. We know that we will be at Rosemuir Farm for our concerts (a massive thanks to the generosity of the Geekie Family). We know that artists will be regional, amazing, and spectacular. We know that final scheduling will be last minute with possible 11th hour changes. We know that we will be announcing the lineup one by one and late. We know that tickets will go on sale much closer to the festival than usual and that marketing will not be as grand as usual, but hopefully effective. We know that we will have to be on our toes and ready to shift. But, we also have a festival team that is working really hard to make something much more spontaneous than usual, and also beautiful, stunning and fun.

With so many unknowns, we ask for your patience and support. We are so grateful for the enthusiasm we receive when we tell people we are trying for a festival this summer and to the artists who are so, so happy to be offered work doing what they love. We are amazed by the ongoing generous contributions and offers of help from donors, sponsors, volunteers and other organizations.  All those things keep us going.

Thank you!!!!! 

The Festival Team

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2020 Hornby Festival Cancelled

2020 Hornby Festival Cancelled Due to COVID-19 Global Pandemic

It is with sadness and heavy hearts that we announce that for the first time in 38 summers, the Hornby Festival will not run in 2020. We make this announcement in adherence and response to the request of Dr. Bonnie Henry, Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, that there be no large gathering in BC in summer 2020, including festivals. 

The health and safety of our community is at the centre of our decision-making and we agree with the assessment of Dr. Henry that running the Hornby Festival in this year would put our precious small community, audience, artists, volunteers and staff at risk.  We know that the arts and culture are critical to a healthy and vibrant community, particularly in times of challenge and isolation and that so many people look forward to the Hornby Festival all year, so this was a very hard decision to make. Please know that it is the result of serious consideration.

We are now working hard to safeguard the Hornby Festival and make sure that it can make a healthy and vibrant return July 29 – August 7, 2021. As you would have heard in the national media, the arts, like many sectors, have been hit very hard. COVID-19 has created an unprecedented and devastating situation for musicians, technicians, arts organizations, and many other industry professionals. We are fortunate that the Hornby Festival has worked diligently for many years to put mechanisms in place for risk mitigation management. It is our hope that these will see us through. If you are able, we encourage you to support the arts industry however you can, whether that is volunteering or attending future events, purchasing merch, art or music online, or following and supporting your favourite performers and organizations on social media. If you feel inspired and are able to support the Hornby Festival, you can make a donation to the festival to help us weather this cancellation, please click here, or email us at generalmanager@hornbyfestival.bc.ca.

At this time, we would like to give a huge shout out to our artists (who are facing a massive loss of work and income), our volunteers, our festival team (staff and board), our loyal audience, our sponsors and donors, our funders and our beautiful community for all your amazing support.

We will greatly miss gazing from backstage at you all dancing with your friends and neighbours on a warm glorious summer night under the moonlight to some of the best music this world has to offer. That is one of our favourite things!

Stay safe through this time and we will see you again next year. 

With so much love from the Hornby Festival team!

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Hornby Festival Society AGM

New Horizons:

Wednesday, March 4th 2020, 15:30-17:30

Wednesday, March 11th 2020, 15:30-17:30

Everyone Welcome!


With all of our new society members, we are having a two-step AGM to satisfy the quorum. If the quorum is not met on the 4th, we will have the AGM on the following Wednesday, March 11th.

All of us at the Hornby Festival wish you the best and hope you are looking forward to this exciting year! Don’t forget to book your accommodation for this summer and visit http://hornbyisland.com/ 

The Hornby Festival will be held July 30th to August 8th 2020!!
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Festival 2020 July 30th – Aug 8th!

All of the main events for this year’s Festival are finished!

We want to thank everyone for another amazing Festival this year! We look forward to seeing you next year between July 30th and August 8th. Thank you to all our staff, volunteers, donors, sponsors, artists, writers, billets, and to anyone else who helped make our Festival an amazing one this year!