Niagara Rocks

niagara summer 2015

Bit tired of listening to your big city friends bragging about all the stuff going on in Toronto?
Give ‘em a load of this.

“So…” you say casually.  “I scored tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld in June. Nah…I don’t have to drive all the way into the city. He’s going to be at the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines. I had a CAA Niagara pre-sale code to get them early. No…your Toronto CAA code wouldn’t have worked…only Niagara CAA.  What’s that? Oh no…parking won’t be expensive. We live two blocks away – we’ll walk. That’s what we did when the Hip played the Meridian Centre a couple of months ago. Hmmm…maybe we’ll invite Jerry over for a beer at our place after the show…”

Things are really starting to rock and roll around here.
When our fancy new Performing Arts Center opens shortly, Niagara will have one of the best such facilities in Canada. In fact, according to Diamond + Schmitt, the architects responsible for its creation, in terms of acoustic quality, size and variety of top quality performance spaces, our PAC will be second only to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. While we don’t yet have the lineup for the 2015/2016 PAC season, we do know that the Centre for the Arts from Brock University is moving operations there – and they’re always rocking! Given that last year’s Centre for the Arts lineup included such luminaries as Allan Doyle, Steven Page, Jim Cuddy and many, many more, we can look forward to absolutely great things.

And that’s just the tip of the local entertainment iceberg. Art Garfunkel, the Temptations, Chubby Checker, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Engelbert Humperdink, Earth, Wind and Fire, The 5th Dimension, Boston, Steppenwolf, Spirit of the Dance, and Heart are all playing at the Avalon Theatre at the Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls. It’s enough to give Baby Boomer groupies a collective cardiac arrest.

Up for a quick border crossing? The Seneca Niagara Casino has its own sparkling little lineup of stars for you over the next few months, including Paul Anka, Brass Transit, Cathy Griffin and Gary Allan. The best deal of all for summer entertainment is always the Tuesday Outdoor Concert season at Artpark. For $12, you can enjoy the likes of Widespread Panic, Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick, the Steve Miller Band, Deep Purple and the Doobie Brothers.

So…if your Toronto friends and relatives call to brag about what they’ve been up to in the big city…mention a few of these little gems and knock them dead. Or…if they seem suitably envious, maybe invite them here for a visit. They can stay at White Oaks so you don’t have to clean the guest room.


Is a travel writer with weekly columns in the Toronto Star, various other newspapers and tripatlas.com. She's a thrilled to be a blog contributor, and is inspired by the people she's met through White Oaks.

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