In the few months I’ve been writing for the Ryga Festival, this past one was certainly the hardest. With the impacts of the Bald Range wildfire still being felt, it’s difficult to find the words, spoken, written, or otherwise, to describe how the community of Summerland has been affected. So many people are displaced, grieving, or helping neighbours in the aftermath, and, to be honest, it’s been challenging to know whether discussing the festival was even appropriate. As we move ahead as a community, the Ryga Festival Society has shared its message regarding this year’s wildfires. If you haven’t read it, please give it a look. This year’s festival isn’t the one that was planned, but what’s come together in its place is worth sharing, thanks to the people and places who made room for it.
This past month put even the basics in doubt, including whether we’d have anywhere to gather at all. That the festival is happening this year comes down, more than anything, to the venues that opened their doors when it mattered. Some of that generosity came from beyond Summerland itself. When Wednesday night’s Blue Taffeta Party Dress & Other Stories, with Dennis Hawkins-Bogle, needed a home, the Elks Lodge in Penticton opened its doors. It’s a quiet indicator that community here doesn’t stop at the town line.
Closer to home, Summerland’s own venues are showing up too. Thursday morning, the Summerland Library hosts a character-development speed-writing workshop. It’s a fitting home for writers to gather and put pen to paper. The library isn’t done there. Friday morning, it hosts A Haida Wedding, a conversation with artists Robert Davidson and Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson. Through photographs and stories from their own wedding, the two share the first traditional Haida marriage recognized under Haida law in over a century, a ceremony colonialism had nearly erased. A speed-writing workshop one day, a cultural conversation the next. That kind of range is exactly what a festival leans on, and the library has given it generously this week.
The library is far from alone. This year’s festival is truly a community event, with the ABD Centre (formerly the IOOF Hall), the Summerland Community Centre, the Rec Board Room, Memorial Park, and Centre Stage Theatre each hosting events across town. In 2026, Summerland doesn’t just host the Ryga Festival. Summerland is the Ryga Festival.
Despite everything that had to change this year, the performance I was most looking forward to is still on. Deaf playwright and performer Chris Dodd brings a reading of his newest work in progress, Nineteen Eighty Eight, to the ABD Centre on Main Street. It’s a personal and often funny look at the last year of his hearing. I’ll admit a personal stake in this one. A while back, I had the chance to interview Chris, the first proper written interview I’d ever conducted, and he made it an easy one, thoughtful in his answers and generous enough to encourage me in my own work along the way. For an early step in my writing, it was about as good an experience as I could have asked for.
It also sold me on Chris’s performance. I hadn’t really considered before what a Deaf person’s relationship to music might be, but Chris mentioned that he’d lost his hearing as a teenager. While he could no longer listen to music, he still remembered it. That was the moment, before any schedule was even announced, that I knew I had to see this one. Chris is the kind of person you find yourself rooting for, and I was glad to see his work make it through the changes. In conversation, he was as warm and generous as he is accomplished in his field, and easily one of the most fascinating people I’ve had the chance to speak with. Our interview is coming in the lead-up to the festival, so take this as both an invitation to the reading and a reason to check back before then.
This year’s festival may be a smaller one, but there’s still plenty more to it than what I’ve covered here. You’ll find the full schedule, along with everything you need to reserve your spot, on the Ryga Fest homepage. Every event is free to attend, with donations accepted, whether that’s a play, a reading, a workshop, or a conversation you won’t find anywhere else. And on Saturday evening, the festival brings everyone together for something made for exactly this moment. An Evening in the Valley is a community gathering in Memorial Park, put together in collaboration with Erick Thompson, and borrowing the name of Craig Milton’s beloved house-concert series with his blessing. The evening opens at 5 with a lineup of community performers, before the South Okanagan Big Band takes over at 6. It’s an open invitation to spend a warm evening in the park, together.
The last few weeks have asked a lot of this community, and the festival that’s arrived on the other side looks different from the one we set out to hold. But thanks to the venues that opened their doors, the artists who showed up, and a community that keeps finding its way back to one another, the Ryga Festival is still here. We would love for you to be here too.