If you've been driving around Regina any time the past few months, you've probably seen the signs for Summer Bash. At only three years old, this annual festival seems to be the talk of the town and has taken the southern community of Regina by storm.

This past summer, Summer Bash has rolled out five free movies, from July 4 – August 22, as well as a Summer Market on August 11 and their main festival this upcoming August 25.

Their main festival at the end of the summer is Harbour Landings answer to the Cathedral Village Arts Festival in May, which marks the beginning of summer. Because of the huge success of CVAF and its legacy in the city, Summer Bash is using them as a model to promote local businesses, vendors, musicians and artists.

Do you ever feel lonely? Or worthless? Or like you're not good enough?

There's a chance you're not alone.

More and more people feel this way each year, yet our network of people is becoming ever larger. We have a plethora of ways to share our opinions and thoughts, but it seems the more we share, the hollower we become. It's as if the more we put out there, the less we have to ourselves.

I haven't gone on a major trip since my journey to Riding Mountain National Park last autumn, so I booked off a week to travel out west. However, things didn't work out as I had planned, and my vacation turned more-or-less into a staycation.

Thankfully, it wasn't all for naught. I managed to get away one day, and I did a couple of little day trips throughout the week too. The day I got away I wanted to go as far north as possible, and I chose the Cochin Lighthouse.

The Cochin Lighthouse is just north of the Battlefords and it is the only lighthouse in the landlocked province of Saskatchewan. It sits on the top of Pirot Hill in the village of Cochin and shines a light out onto the nearby Jackfish Lake – or as locals call it, the "Cochin Ocean".

I've wanted to visit the Battlefords in Saskatchewan for a few years now. As somebody who loves history, just to visit a city that once housed the capital of the North-West Territories is reason enough. I'm sure I've passed through the city when I was younger, but I've never had the chance to explore it as an adult.

My interest in both cities grew when I was doing research for my 2017 article, "6 Saskatchewan Cemeteries to Visit This October". One individual I interviewed for the article was Don Light of the North-West Historical Society. Light was tasked with the sensitive job of moving about eighty graves within The Battleford Cemetery. Relocating graves is always the last option when it comes to a cemetery, but in this case, they had no choice. The Battleford Cemetery sits on the edge the North Saskatchewan River, and the banks of the cemetery were slowly eroding. Had the graves been left undisturbed, headstones, monuments and caskets would start falling into the roaring river below.

Light and I had an excellent chat that day and he told me many fascinating stories about what they found when they were moving the graves. Some of the graves he had to move were Metis graves, all while under the supervision of police and Indigenous professionals. Many of these caskets had rotted and were open, and they found a plethora of Roman Catholic crosses and First Nation beadwork, a sign of traditional Metis culture.

You probably clicked on this article because of the swastika. Many people feel strongly about it and believe that it is offensive to show any swastika, at any time, absolutely ever.

But the thing is, what if it isn't a swastika? What if it's a sauwastika?

"It doesn't matter!", some would say. A swastika is a swastika is a swastika. Well, not exactly. To start, the swastika, and its inverted counterpart sauwastika, have been used for millenniums by civilisations around the world. They have been used by the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Vikings, First Nations, Egyptians, Celts, Mayans, Greeks, Africans, and everybody in between. Some refer to it as a symbol of good fortune, while others say it is the symbol for the top of the earth, the centre of the universe or the passaging of time. The Buddhists recognise the swastika as the symbol of Buddha's footsteps. Where his teaching goes, so does good fortune and the swastika.

Where normalcy ends, fringe begins.

Every July, the Regina International Fringe Theatre Festival hosts five days of drama, dance, comedy, magic and theatre. This event brings in performers from around the world, and every show is vastly different from the next. This form of abstract thought is something that is so diverse – so orthodoxly perverse – that there are no limits to what it might create.

This is what Devon More's performance Hits Like A Girl intends to explore. Abstract thought is the very essence of creativity, but what happens if you lose the ability to use it? Without the boundaries of normalcy, there is no fringe; and without fringe, there is no normalcy.

Frank Albo is known to many as "The Dan Brown of Canada". He gained this informal title through his many decades of research, interviews and investigations into the secrets of the Manitoba Legislature. Through his work, he claims that Winnipeg was meant to have a much larger role in Canada – going so far to say that it was to be the "Jerusalem of the New World".

It may sound odd, but there are a lot of strange motifs within the Manitoba Legislature that otherwise wouldn't make sense. These include being the exact dimensions of King Solomon's Temple, having medusas and demons guarding the entrances, and a "black star" of sacrifice beneath the rotunda. Stranger still is that none of these symbols are in the visually similar Saskatchewan Legislature which was constructed about the same time and for the same purpose. For some reason, the Manitoba Legislature was uniquely created in this manner.

Albo's research has not only gotten a lot of attention in Canada, but international attention too. One of these people was His Excellency Konstantin Zhigalov, Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan. While visiting Winnipeg in 2014, Zhigalov attended Albo's tour. After it concluded, Zhigalov pulled Albo aside and invited him to the capital of Kazakhstan. The request was peculiar, but the moment Albo arrived, he knew exactly why he was chosen.

When I was younger, I prided myself on having a hollow leg and the ability to eat much more than the average man. However, last weekend at The Centennial Market's second annual Food Truck Wars, I finally met my match.

I've written about The Centennial Market a few times, and I've watched it grow in leaps and bounds the last few years. The market is inside the shell of the former Sears Outlet building, a building where I spent much of my childhood. Sears closed this outlet building in 2016 and shortly afterwards The Centennial Market opened in an attempt to save the shopping centre.

The market grew quickly, and the parking lot of the building has become a hub of events throughout the year. One of the biggest events is the annual Food Truck Wars.