What is a neighbor? According to Dictionary.com the root of the word is the Old English word “neahgebur,” which literally translates to “near dweller.”
Michiganders have no closer “near dwellers” than Canadians, with whom they share a border, lakes, history, and a love of maple syrup and winter sports.
And yet … how well do we truly know our neighbor, Canada?
A Kalamazoo festival taking place Sept. 19 — Can-Am Peace Jam 2026 — is out to foster good neighborly vibes among Canadians, Kalamazoo residents, curious Michiganders and anyone interested in learning more about America’s neighbor to the north, says Can-Am Peace Jam founder and director Channon Russette-Mondoux, a local chef, food historian and journalist.
The festival’s fourth iteration is set to take place from 1 to 11 p.m. at the Arcadia Creek Festival Place with a special focus this year on French-Canadian culture. The festival, with its goal to educate, entertain and inspire, is as delightfully complex as the Canadian diaspora, and festival organizers aim to hit “all of the points” with its roster of offerings, Russette-Mondoux says.
Can-Am Peace Jam (formerly called Canadiana Fest) has everything one could want in a cultural festival: a wide array of music and comedy performances; some friendly (and delectable) food competitions; unique Canada-themed mascots; VIP tents; educational talks by historians, professors and indigenous elders; actors spreading peace and unity; a plethora of sports activities; a beer garden and nonalcoholic bar; art; and genealogical experts.
The festival weaves indigenous and Native American performers, artists, vendors and craftspeople into the programming, Russette-Mondoux says, and intentionally opens the ceremony with a land acknowledgment. With a heritage that includes Metís, First Nations Mi’kmaq and French-Canadian, Russette-Mondoux understands the importance of being a multicultural event centered on building community — to do so is simply a part of the Canadian way of life, she explains.
Last year Daisy Kostus, an elder of the Cree Waswanipi First Nations people, welcomed festivalgoers in Cree, Anishinaabe and English. “She addressed the crowd and said, ‘We are here because we are family. We need to remember that we’ve come to join in with each other and be friends.’ That’s how we launch the festival. That’s the spirit that we want people to have as they go about the rest of the day, and to acknowledge that.”
This aspect is something the Can-Am Peace Jam does well, says Jane Ghosh, executive director at Discover Kalamazoo.
(Courtesy photos)
“There’s a history behind the land that we need to acknowledge and I think Channon does a phenomenal job at that in making sure that we’re starting the festival in a respectful way,” Ghosh says. “The country boundaries that exist today were not the case back in the day and there’s shared native communities between Michigan and Canada.”
“You cannot find another festival that goes to these kinds of lengths to create an experience — it’s not just some beer and food and music,” Russette-Mondoux says. “It’s a gestalt thing, it really is. It’s the sum of its parts.”
In 2025, in just its third year, the festival hosted approximately 2,500 guests from 11 states, according to Russette-Mondoux, marking an attendance increase of nearly 50 percent from the 2024 festival.
An organizing committee of six people work year-round to plan the festival, but it takes the contributions of about 120 volunteers to execute the event, she says.
That kind of growth for a new festival “is pretty remarkable,” Ghosh says.
The politics of it all
In 2023, when the festival first wrapped itself in buffalo plaid and stomped onto the scene, “there wasn’t this level of angst about Canada going on,” Russette-Mondoux says, referring to current political tensions between the United States and Canada.
(Courtesy photos)
The event began as the Canadiana Festival, holding the name for its first two years, before U.S. President Donald Trump entered office in January 2025 and began detailing his desire to annex Canada — a sovereign nation — and turn it into the 51st state of the United States.
The comments sent a shockwave of anger and frustration through Russette-Mondoux’s Canadian compatriots, who were used to being the butt of jokes made by Americans perpetuating stereotypes about Canadians’ inherent politeness, she says.
“Canadians have sat back and tolerated the ribbing, the teasing, but we always kind of shook our heads like, ‘We’re really cool, really good people.’ And here we are in a situation now where Canadians are just completely disenfranchised by the U.S.,” she says. “I think at first, it was shock and frustration at the situation, but then it continued.”
After the president’s comments and the resulting tensions between U.S. and Canadian officials, Russette-Mondoux says she saw a different side to Americans. Whenever she wore Canada-centric clothing in public, she began receiving hard stares and grumbles where before she experienced friendliness or curiosity. As a result, the festival officially changed its name to the CanAm Peace Jam in 2025 in an effort to foster diplomacy around the event.
(Courtesy photos)
The political environment has impacted more than just the festival’s atmosphere and its name. Russette-Mondoux says she is often asked why the festival roster doesn’t just feature Canadian musical guests. The answer is a bit more complicated than that it’s expensive — which it is when you factor in travel and visa fees. Simply getting a visa can be a struggle.
According to the U.S. Department of State’s website, a musician from Calgary, for example, must schedule an interview after applying for the temporary performer’s visa required for an event like Can-Am Peace Jam. However, the process is so backlogged that estimates for the next available interview simply state “N/A,” as in “Not Available.”
The fees, requirements and backlog are ridiculous, Russette-Mondoux says. “And you know what? A lot of Canadian artists don’t want to come here. There is pushback now. They’re like, ‘I don’t know if I feel safe over there. I don’t know if I’m going to get to the border and get turned away,’ which has happened.”
Ongoing threats by politicians about tariffs and takeovers have added an unwanted element to the festival’s atmosphere, but in the end, Russette-Mondoux and Can-Am Peace Jam organizers just want to share Canadian culture, foster community connections and facilitate an enjoyable experience for attendees, despite any differences of political opinions.
To Ghosh, the festival is an opportunity to sidestep politics at least for a day.
“We are so close to Canada and so many people in Michigan have a personal connection to Canada, to celebrate our close neighbors just makes perfect sense,” Ghosh says.
Origins in community
For Russette-Mondoux, a Canadian-American who has lived stateside for the last 20 years, the Can-Am Peace Jam was born from a deep longing for her home country and its culture.
“The origins of all this came after the pandemic; there were three years that went by and I hadn’t seen anyone in Canada,” Russette-Mondoux says. “I actually had tried to cross over and I couldn’t get in — even as a Canadian — and I was heartbroken.”
So she decided to do something about it. After all, Kalamazoo loves a festival and the city’s annual event calendar has grown into a diverse web of heritage, causes, culture, music, food and more.
“We do Irish Fest, we do Cinco de Mayo — why not celebrate something related to Canada?” she asks.
The prevalence of events such as festivals is one of the things that makes Kalamazoo so vibrant to residents and visitors, Ghosh says. Discover Kalamazoo, the destination marketing organization for Kalamazoo County, owns only two annual events, and everything else the organization does “is just promoting somebody else’s event and good idea — and I would absolutely put the Can-Am Peace Jam right in the mix,” she says.
For Russette-Mondoux, founding the festival wasn’t just about comfort foods and familiar music. Establishing the festival was an extension of the societal framework of Canada, which afforded her a different life than earlier generations of her family. She describes herself as “a person who came from an underprivileged family,” and is the first in her “entire lineage to graduate post-secondary.”
She was able to pursue higher education “because the Canadian people wanted to invest in someone like me,” she says. “I was willing to do the work, and they wanted to support me, and it raised me up. It changed the trajectory of my life, the life of my children, and forever more, my family will have a different life than I had, and I’m extremely grateful for that.”
To honor that community spirit, a cornerstone of the festival is that proceeds go to organizations that support their communities in both Michigan and Canada.
Since 2023, the festival has donated approximately $30,000 in food products and cash, primarily to Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes and the South Michigan Food Bank. All of the registration fees collected from the 2024 butter tart bake-off were donated to the Downtown Windsor Community Coalition. Other proceeds have been donated to relief efforts for those impacted by the wildfire in Jasper, Alberta, and Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. The festival also subsidizes booth fees for nonprofits, BIPOC- and women-owned businesses and other organizations doing good within the community.
“People ask me, ‘Why do you make it such a point of this festival helping to support others in need?’ It’s because that’s where I come from, that’s what you do for your community,” Russette-Mondoux says.
