The cancelation of a major music festival that every year draws tens of thousands of visitors to the Cavendish area was announced by organizers on April 28.

Ticket buyers will be emailed directly with information to request a refund or transfer their ticket to the 2021 festival. 2020 ticket buyers will be offered $30 in festival beach bucks (tokens) should they choose to transfer their ticket to CBMF 2021. All ticket buyers must respond by May 25 or their ticket will be automatically transferred to CBMF 2021. The purchaser of the ticket must submit for the transfer or refund, not the current ticket holder.

Those that purchased a shuttle pass from The Coach Atlantic Group will be contacted directly by Coach Atlantic Group staff to process their refund. Everyone who is booked at the Route 6 Ranch, official campground of the Cavendish Beach Music Festival, will be contacted to receive a refund or a campsite transfer offer.

The cancellation was announced after weeks of COVID-19 monitoring and consultation with officials from the provincial government and the Resort Municipality of Cavendish. The safety of the community was a primary consideration.

“We want to thank you for your patience, your optimism and the opportunities you have provided us to help bring 11 years of this amazing festival to Cavendish Beach. We are saddened by this outcome, but we know it is the right decision,” said Jeff Squires, President of Whitecap Entertainment.

“Trust that the 2021 Cavendish Beach Music Festival presented by Bell will be one of the best ones yet and we are working to bring you some of the hottest names in country music. Before you know it, we’ll be announcing the 2021 lineup,” said Squires.

By Nils Ling

If you’re an Islander ‘through and through’ it’s a good bet you know Nils Ling or have heard his name. Mr Ling, who ran for the Green Party in 2015 in the federal riding of Egmont, is an author, playwright, actor, filmmaker, syndicated newspaper columnist and former broadcaster who has served as president of Film PEI.

I miss my grandkids.

I miss seeing them face to face. Tousling my grandson’s hair. Digging my fingers into another’s ribs and tickling. Catching them off guard with a particularly groan-worthy dad (grand-dad?) joke.

And sure, technology helps. FaceTime and the like. But there’s no way to hug or tickle or tousle over the phone.

So sure, I miss them in this dark time of isolation. But I’m as okay with that as I can be. Because the alternative is so much more frightening.

I don’t like being scared. I mean, I know nobody does. But this is a particularly insidious form of anxiety. Waking up every morning and doing an inventory: is the room warm or is that a fever? Is that tickle in my throat something to pay attention to or is it because I yelled so loudly at that idiot of a president they have? I need bread – do I need it enough to risk going to the store? Did that cashier just hand me a toonie crawling with something? (She seems like a lovely person, so of course she wouldn’t do it on purpose but all the danger in the world is invisible now).

And I’m not comforted by people saying “Look, we have it easy: all we have to do is sit in front of our TVs for a few weeks. Think about Ann Frank or the Chilean miners or …”. Yeah, I know. Privilege. I do have it easy.

But it’s hard.

I’m not in physical discomfort. I’m warm and probably too well-fed and I can usually stave off boredom with Netflix or a book or YouTube makeup tutorials (“It’s easy to get that perfect smoky eye look …”). I’m acutely aware that I’ve got it better than 99% of the world’s population and have no right to feel miserable but … here we are.

What keeps me going is the sure and certain knowledge that things will get better. That when we are backed into a corner human beings come out kicking and flailing and doing whatever we need to in order to right the ship. Someone who I might have teased in high school is in a lab right now and they’re discovering this nasty, sub-microscopic splash of protein molecules has an Achilles heel, and they’re on the verge of figuring out how to fight back against it and stomp it out of existence.

These are the worst of times but they will bring out the best in us.

Whenever something bad happened to me as a kid my mom would say, “Look, I know it’s hard right now. But damn, it’s going to be a great story some day.” And she was always – always – right.

So, we’re all in this together. We all feel the same way about it. We hate it. We’re hurting.

But damn, it’s going to be a great story. Someday.

Someday.

By Jim Brown

Latest statistics from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show a staggering 14.3 per cent decline in sales across the country, from February to March.

Virtual home tours are replacing actual showings and gloves and masks and hand sanitizer are now a common part of a real estate agent’s tool kit.

“This is definitely something we’ve never seen before,” said realtor Greg Lipton, president of the PEI Real Estate Association, who has been through the Great Recession of 2008.

Still, there are some silver linings in the grim toll. PEI, for instance, only recorded a 4.8 per cent decline in home sales and the average price a home fetched was actually 19 per cent higher on the Island in March.

“It’s going to hurt us…but we’re not ready to push the panic button,” said Mr Lipton.

In the business for 16 years, Mr Lipton said real estate agents earn their living in an uncertain environment at the best of times, so many are prepared for the worst, though probably no one saw a dystopic pandemic coming.

Many have enough in the bank to get through a few bad months, he said.

If the pandemic is resolved by the the end of June there is a decent chance of a “pretty good recovery.”

A lot of sales are done in July, said Mr Lipton.

He went on to say listings are picking up and people are still buying and selling properties. But there have been changes, such as showings normally done over three to four weeks “are not going to happen.” Instead they are going to stretch out over three to four months.

From the CREA news release: “March 2020 will be remembered around the planet for a long time. Canadian home sales and listings were increasing heading into what was expected to be a busy spring for Canadian REALTORS®,” said Jason Stephen, president of CREA. “After Friday the 13th, everything went sideways. REALTORS® are complying with government directives and advice, all the while adopting virtual technologies allowing them to continue showing properties to clients already in the market, and completing all necessary documents. They remain your best source for information and guidance when negotiating the sale or purchase of a home in these unprecedented times.”