Which brings me to one of Canada’s neatest little music festivals. To protect my sources, I won’t identify it, except to say it has been an annual event in southeastern Ontario for more than four decades.

But this year, the festival’s very existence may hang in the balance. Not because of financial irregularities. Not because the lineup is lame – with performers such as former Yukoner Kate Weekes on the schedule, it’s anything but.

It isn’t because there may be droughts, plagues, pestilences, or 40-day floods in the weather forecast.

No. It’s because a week before the festival, one of the organizers caught wind of the fact that a sweet little critter known as Mephitis mephitis may be lurking on the festival grounds, ready to cause a stink if someone’s pedal steel disturbs the sleep of her black and white-striped kits.

Did rain and mud scupper Woodstock? Nay, nay. Did a stabbing at a free concert in Altamont, California the same year spell curtains for the Rolling Stones? No way.

But could an agitated Momma skunk make central Canadian folkies run for the hills, apologizing as they go? Maybe yes, maybe no.

If she does, I can’t wait to read the official report to the event’s funders. Stay tuned.

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