Capital Daily for Tuesday, June 16

Rifflandia, the late-summer festival that brought Lorde, Iggy Pop, and TLC to Victoria over 18 years, is permanently cancelled.

Co-founders and spouses Nick Blasko and Casey Austin said a 2026 edition was still on the table until a few weeks ago. A $90K funding boost promised by the BC government this year wasn't enough to close the gap. The festival had run at a loss since its first edition in 2008.

The sticking point was space. After years at Royal Athletic Park, then the Matullia Lands at Rock Bay, the organizers couldn't find a downtown venue that fit. "Access to a venue of the right size and scope in downtown Victoria has always been challenging, and this year it finally became unattainable," Austin and Blasko wrote.

The inaugural 2008 weekend featured Tanya Tagaq and local favourites Current Swell and Jon & Roy. By 2022, the comeback lineup billed Lorde and Charli XCX two years before "Girl, so confusing" made their dynamic famous. The Rifflandia Entertainment Company is still active, with projects in Toronto, London, and Paris.

Behind every door at 780 Blanshard is a studio. Turn any knob in the yellow art-deco building at Blanshard and Burdett and you'll find a workshop full of paint, sculpture, light. The Vault Gallery gets a complete floor-to-ceiling makeover every month. Three times a year, up to 2,000 people stream through in a single afternoon.

That's the building Reliance Properties wants to convert into a hotel, and the roughly 200 artists from four galleries and five non-profits who work there know what's coming. Logan Ford, who founded the Vancouver Island Visual Arts Society and runs Rockslide Studio across about 65% of the four storeys, figures everyone will have to clear out as early as next spring.

Ford holds no grudge. Reliance let the artists in at below-market rent for the past four and a half years. But the spaces he keeps finding now are stuffy old offices with low ceilings and windows that won't open, useless for art and ventilation, and the good industrial space is priced past reach.

He's hoping for the same luck that found this building empty in 2022. A fixer-upper, maybe a philanthropist. Something with tall ceilings and windows that open.