Canada Rock Fest Founder Addresses 2023 Cancellation

(Image: Canada Rock Fest 2022/Saturday Snake Oil)

Canada Rock Fest is cancelled this year as the Grand Forks Owner and Organizer focuses on his health.

The announcement hit social media this past weekend and garnered a fair amount of online attention.

Bounce Radio caught up with Chuck Varabioff to learn more:

“Due to my lung issues that I’ve been dealing with, it’s actually been five years and they’re not getting better. It’s been a little bit worse the last few months and we have decided to put 2023 on hold and just focus on my health….”

“People do understand that when it comes to your health, you can’t really screw around with that and so everybody is extremely supportive. People are thankful and grateful for what we’ve done over the last eight years and I think people are hoping, us too, that you never know what’s going to happen in 2024 and beyond.” he adds

Varabioff explains that operating the annual festival has been no easy feat:

“The first three years I actually dealt with the agents. We deal with booking the bands, we deal with…. If the artists want green M&M’s and pink toilet paper in their dressing rooms…. We dealt with all the catering, all the flights…. Everything from start to finish including the ticketing…. In the last couple of years we did start hiring different agencies to do different things. Like last Summer I had a ticketing company doing the tickets; that really helped out a lot. So I feel that if we were able to go ahead in future years that would have been the plan, to go ahead and subcontract out different parts of the event.”

Canada Rock Fest was formerly known as Cannafest and for a brief period, Titans of Rock.

The Bounce Radio Newsroom also caught up with Mayor Everett Baker and will have that story to follow.