Today, Calgary alt-weekly Fast Forward Weekly announced that they’re shutting down.
Canada, by our count, only has three remaining independent alt-weeklies—Toronto’s NOW, Halifax’s The Coast, and Vancouver’s The Georgia Straight. It’s a number that’s depressingly low, especially for music fans: The role of the alt-weekly was to promote local stories, and local stories that mainstream media didn’t. And when it came to music—Canadian music—local alt-weeklies were the conduit to local scenes: They helped introduce us to new bands. To soon-to-be-important bands. And in a country as vast as Canada, they helped us discover bands that, otherwise, we might not have ever heard. Continues at aux.tv