McGill Alumni Portal

Last month, the McGill Alumni Association gave away three sets of tickets for Osheaga–Montreal’s largest music festival–to the McGill community.

Osheaga takes place at Parc Jean Drapeau, on Île Sainte-Hélène, just a short metro ride away from downtown Montreal. This year was the festival’s busiest to date, with over 120,000 attendees over the three days. It featured a lineup of both Canadian and international artists of all genres from folk to dubstep.

Two of our contests winners, Julia Kryluk, U2 Pharmacology, and Maxime Bélanger, share some stories from their experiences.

JULIA KRYLUK

A few days before the epic Osheaga weekend began I was working on some summer school homework when I found out I had won two tickets to Osheaga on Sunday thanks to the McGill Alumni Association! I was thrilled! This being my first summer in Montreal, I had never been to Osheaga before! I called up my best friend we squealed a bit on the phone to each other in excitement.

The day of the festival we watched a number of bands starting early in the day and going late into the night. There were so many artists performing, James Vincent McMorrow, City and Colour, Passion Pit, Knife Party, the Black Keys, Metric, the Shins and Wolfgang Gartner to name a few.

The eclectic grouping of artists is really what made the festival special. We got mellow with City and Colour, partied hard with Knife Party and rocked out to the Black Keys. There were hundreds of thousands of people there and everyone was so happy to be all together!

All in all it was a wonderful day and an amazing experience! Thank you so much McGill Alumni Association for giving me this opportunity!

MAXIME BÉLANGER

I’ve gone to every edition of Osheaga so far. It’s like Christmas in the summer for me. This year, we all knew it was going to be big. You just had to look on twitter or Facebook to notice the huge vibe that was going on. I got on the site at 1pm, not knowing what I was going to hit. A massive human wall. It was the first time the festival was this crowded early in the day. The first performance I wanted to watch (The Walkmen) was at 2 p.m., so I had an hour to wander around the site and discover the new setup. It is HUGE! But it’s perfect considering the amount of people who showed up. Then, the shows started:

The Walkmen: Having seen them a couple years ago at Osheaga, I was expecting a really good performance. Although the singer still got a nice voice, the show was as sleepy as it gets. They certainly didn’t have the same powerful energy this time around!

Fun.: This was one awesome show. I don’t care if every little girls listen to their songs, they’re such a great band. Nate Ruess (the singer) surely knows how to please the audience and gave one hell of a performance. My only complaint: too short!

Wintersleep: War Child was at Osheaga again this year and I couldn’t resist Wintersleep’s acoustic set they had programmed, specially since I was going to miss their set later that day. It was short, but worth it! I also needed to rest my feet and that was one of the good spot to do so.

Franz Ferdinand: They played some new songs; it was good. Not one of my favorite bands, but I ‘m happy I got to see them live.

Florence + the Machine: Florence was seriously amazing. You could feel she was very happy to be part of the event. Everybody was singing along and having a good time. Pure magic!

Sigur Ros: Beautiful, lyrical, and very impressive! The video on the big screen was also very well done.

Justice: Dance!!! What a gigantic wall of speakers! Loved every bit of the show.

Divine Fits: The night was not over after Justice, because Divine Fits was in town for a little gig at Il Motore. Dan Boeckner (Wolfparade, Handsome furs, etc.) and Britt Daniel (Spoon) were here to try their new songs. What an awesome way to end such an unforgettable day!!

I can’t thank you enough for all the fun we had that day!!

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All photos by Julia Kryluk