Early June 2020 Opuntia is published by Dale Speirs, Calgary, Alberta. It is posted on www.efanzines.com and www.fanac.org. My e-mail address is:
[email protected] When sending me an emailed letter of comment, please include your name and town in the message. AROUND COWTOWN photos by Dale Speirs Calgary has always been a great city for festivals and other outdoor events. Normally I can use them for a few introductory pages in each issue but the coronavirus pandemic stopped that. Every weekend of the summer there were street and ethnic festivals, excepting that during the first two weeks of July the Stampede rodeo reigned supreme. Traditionally the first summer event was the Lilac Festival, a street fair held on the first Sunday in June as the lilacs begin to bloom. 50,000 people jammed into 13 blocks along 4 Street SW in the Mission district of central Calgary. See OPUNTIAs #343, 380, 415, and 444 for photos of past Lilac Festivals. Alas, all gone and the Stampede too. In lieu of the festival, the cover of this issue shows the lilacs in my back yard coming into bloom. At right is a view of the Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall taken on a warm Saturday afternoon on May 30. Those tall white things are wind breakers. They had to be installed several decades ago because the skyscrapers on either side turned the street into a wind tunnel by funneling down winds from above. On such a beautiful weekend, the mall would normally be shoulder-to-shoulder with citizenry.