It’s official, the fall season is here in all of its pumpkin-spiced, red-leaved, and crisp-aired glory. Whether you’re ready for all things autumn or need a little help letting go of summer, we’ve compiled nine ways to help you celebrate the season. 

If you’ve walked the downtown strip on Red River Road at all in the past couple of weeks, you would have certainly noticed the newly refurbished exterior of the King’s Block building thanks to the freshly exposed original facade and sophisticated black paint with gold accents. You probably also noticed that brand new sign on the right side of the building for Bloom Bar + Lounge, now open and ready to party. 

Since that first issue, The Walleye has published nearly 200 issues shining a light on all the remarkable people who make Thunder Bay a special place to live. In honour of this milestone anniversary, we’re turning the spotlight on 15 longtime contributors whose voices, passion, and creativity have played an integral role in shaping the magazine.

This year’s lineup features a variety of genres such as drama, comedy, documentary, horror, and thriller, with an emphasis on filmmakers from the region. “Our goal is to highlight local films and the local film industry, and we’ve been accomplishing that,” says Harpelle.

Described as Fargo meets Trailer Park Boys, this dark comedy follows Jason/Tumbleweed (Ben Albert), who dreams of becoming a famous rapper. But, he needs money to get to Sudbury to record his album. With the help of his girlfriend Tiffany (Shaundra Benincasa), they come up with a scheme to blackmail his estranged dad James (Greg Bishop) into giving them the money.

Before a single frame of The Moth was shot, co-directors Michelle Derosier and Zoe Gordon were years deep in discussions about the impacts of regional development and ecological change on the land. 

‘Tis the season for festivals, fun, and folk music, and Mt. Joy’s fourth LP, Hope We Have Fun, boasts 13 tracks that sound as good in headphones as they do on a festival stage.

Many of you may know Lights from her 2000s emo pop era; now, while we all may be ready to leave the extreme side bangs behind (if you know, you know), Lights’s new album A6 shows that she is ready to enter a new musical chapter.

It's a curtain call for the democracy Canadians built after the world wars. Politics is evolving from an arena where powerbrokers create consensus from disparate viewpoints into a zero-sum game where stakeholders choose loyalties, the victor divides the spoils, and the losers are annihilated. Our partisan choices are either a technocratic centre-right that thinks it knows better or a rules-weary right wing that feigns no moral pretense.

I was ready for the unexpected on my first day as an outreach worker at Elevate NWO. Elevate is a harm reduction organization responding to treatment and prevention of HIV and Hepatitis C in Thunder Bay and the wider region, but also finds itself responding to other emerging issues. In Thunder Bay, that often means advocating for our unhoused neighbours in the fight for housing, not tents.  

All this said, I was nevertheless surprised when all the talk of my first day was about birds!

Summer is here and it’s time to live, laugh, and litter outside.