In 2005 Matt, Carmen and Mark founded the Commercial Drive Car-Free Festival. Working with a brilliant crew of organizers and volunteers the event absolutely blew up with 25 000 people converging for an afternoon of music, dancing, politics and general good times on the Drive.
In 2006 the Festival, under the auspices of the new East Van Celebration Society went off again, this time drawing 50 000 people and making even more explicit a radical politics of ethical sustainability and social ecology, as well as opposition to the evil Gateway Project. See www.gatewaysucks.org.
In 2007 the Drive Fest expanded to 2 days with Fests in June and July. Despite some kind of nasty weather for both events, they kept going off, with 30 000 people rocking out at both events. The Drive Fest is going to continue to develop and grow and morph and we always need new ideas and new people. Check out www.commercialdrivefestival.org for more info and/or to get involved. 

So now we’ve taken our momentum and have created Car- Free Vancouver Day !! In 2008 four more neighbourhoods – Main, Cambie, Kits and the West End are going to put on Car-Free Community Festivals on the same day at the same time – SUNDAY JUNE 15th FROM 12- 6:00. Each neighbourhood fest is going to have its own flavour and style, but together we’ll begin to form a real Car-Free Vancouver Day. The plan is to add a few more neighbourhoods in 2009, soon we will have the city covered in a quilt of neighbourhood festivals and we’ll just keep going from there.

Our How-To-Start-Your-Own-Car-Free-Day toolkit is available here.

If you want to start a fest or get involved in one of the many sprouting up around the city, please have a look at www.carfreevancouverday.org  for lots more.