Wake the Giant 2025

Here are some highlights from the Wake the Giant festival that took place this past weekend. It was a full day of amazing artists, putting on unforgettable performances.

Wake the Giant Music Festival

Wake the Giant took place this past Saturday here in Thunder Bay, and it was the culmination of a lot of work over the past 1.5 years. For those of you who don’t know, the purpose was to celebrate cultures with a spotlight on Indigenous culture and music. The festival featured a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. The goal was to bring different cultures, age groups, music lovers and festival fans all together at one big event. Its aim was to also bring the community closer together and promote Indigenous artists by giving them access to new audiences and opportunities to network with established artists.

My wife and I Anne attended the entire event and we were both extremely impressed with everything. The performers were of course amazing, but everything was also right on schedule. Not only were there some big name bands like Metric, July Talk and Coleman Hell, but there was also a great mix of local talent too. The highlight of the night, I think for many people, was when local students from DFC School performed an original song on stage with July Talk. July Talk, took time out of their own schedule, prior to the event, to record a song with the students. It really was a great moment.

From my point of view, the event looked like a huge success. By the time evening rolled around, the grounds were packed with people. And, because there were no chairs allowed up front, everyone was dancing and standing in front of the stage! Hopefully, this event becomes a yearly thing as it really is for such and important cause.

Wake the Giant Launch - Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School

I was lucky enough to be invited to take photos of the Wake the Giant Launch at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School here in Thunder Bay. ‘Wake the Giant’ is an initiative for local business owners to offer support for indigenous youth. The goal is to have over 150 local business come on board.

The idea behind Wake the Giant is to have local businesses display a sticker in their window, showing any youth that they are more than welcome there. Racism is still a problem here in Thunder Bay and of course across Canada so this is a very important start to help combat that.

If you would like to find out more about this cause head on over to the official Facebook Page.