SOBERFEST
Where: The Ranger Station, 3498 Luxton Rd.
When: Saturday, Aug. 27, 11 a.m.
Tickets: Sold Out
Festivals are so costly to produce at the moment, they generally work on a break-even model.
It often comes down to alcohol sales to generate profit, which makes the presence of alcohol at events an integral part of the production. But where does that leave patrons who would like to attend but don’t want to be around drugs and alcohol?
With very few options, according to Mike Manhas of SoberFest, an alcohol-free comedy and music festival set for Saturday at the South Vancouver Island Rangers trap and skeet shooting facility in Langford.
The Metchosin resident recalls how difficult it was to attend events with alcohol when he was newly sober. “I couldn’t be there,” Manhas said.
“It was so overwhelming. I was close to relapsing. Now, I can go to a concert or an event and it doesn’t bother me, but in early recovery it was super hard.”
Manhas has been in recovery for nearly nine years. For the bulk of that time, he’s made helping others a priority, even hosting events in his backyard to help raise funds for those in need of help. SoberFest grew out of these small-scale events, with Manhas creating the non-profit ReWired Recovery Foundation as a way of facilitating charitable giving on a larger scale.
“Early into my recovery, my sponsor taught me that I needed to give back because I had spent most of my life taking,” Manhas said. “Part of the growth I needed was to show my gratitude.”
The first public event under his ReWired banner is SoberFest, which is getting by through a combination of ticket sales — the event sold out in advance — and sponsorships. ReWired became a reality on July 1, and Manhas said his team has already raised nearly $250,000 for the foundation. Money from the festival, which should be able to pay for four or five addiction treatment beds, will help move that total forward, he said.
“The goal is to get a continuum of treatment [for recipients] where we are with them for a year and provide them with resources.”
Manhas has been overwhelmed by the support he has received, which clearly demonstrates the need for an event of this kind. He said both Alistair MacGregor, the NDP’s public safety critic, and Sheila Malcolmson, B.C.’s minister of mental health and addictions, are expected to speak at the event.
B.C. is losing six people per day, on average, to toxic drugs, Manhas said. With wait times of several months for beds at public addictions facilities, he’s hoping partnerships with addiction recovery organizations like the Umbrella Society and Together We Can, among others, will expedite the process.
Manhas turned to corporate sponsors to help offset costs, and ultimately put the festival in the black. He said all involved were more than willing to support such an event. “Maybe this really is a solution,” he said.
Nanaimo comedian Peter Hudson was brought in for his connection to the arts and culture community on Vancouver Island, and to emcee SoberFest. He worked with Manhas, who he’s known for more than 35 years, to book a lineup that includes musical acts XL the Band and Felicia Harding and comics Ty Lemmon and Ryan Lachance, among more than a dozen others.
When they started booking acts for the festival, the buy-in was immediate. Some of the performers have band members in recovery, Hudson said. “The main thing is to have people who want to be there. More than anything, the hope is they want to be part of something cool and connect with like-minded people who are also into sobriety.”
Hudson, a mental health support worker, lost one of his best friends, comedian Matt Billon, to drugs last year. In his honour, Hudson co-founded the Billon Foundation with Lachance and Kim Billon Finlayson, the late comedian’s sister, to help members of the performing arts community through mental health and addictions recovery.
The foundation is now one of the beneficiaries of SoberFest. “I’m sick of losing friends,” Hudson said. “We all are. But to get over a negative you have to do a positive. If we can raise awareness and save a couple of lives, that’s what we want.”
Billon Finlayson threw her support behind the event, knowing how much her brother cared about helping others, and the degree to which he struggled to stay sober. He would have been “all for something like this,” she said, because inclusiveness in the comedy community — “an industry that can often be pretty cutthroat” — was one of his passions.
“Matt supported sobriety publicly, but suffered privately with his own addictions and mental health for over 20 years. I hoped eventually we could have had those hard-earned discussions about his own struggles.”
Manhas considers himself fortunate, given that he was looking at a prison term at one point, due to his lifestyle. SoberFest is a reminder that life can always get better, he said.
“I live a healthy lifestyle, and the people before me who helped me get there, I will never, ever be able to repay them. How do I start thanking people who gave me my life back? This is my little tiny way of paying it back.”
