Vendors were left scrambling Friday after a windstorm swept through an outdoor market on Thursday night.
The IgNite Night Market was setting up in the parking lot of Booster Juice Recreation Centre in southwest Edmonton when a brief, but intense thunderstorm moved through. Vendors had set up their booths on Thursday in preparation for the Friday opening and many were forced to pivot after powerful wind hit the area.
Artisan Suzanne Boucher was in town from Hay River, N.W.T., to set up a booth for her handmade Indigenous jewelry pieces at the night market. It was a last-minute decision, since she had already planned to be in Edmonton to drop off her son for his year of hockey at Vimy Ridge Academy.
“At around 10:30 p.m. we realized the storm was picking up,” said Boucher. “I told my husband we need to go back and take what we can.”
Len Goueffic helped to clean up tents that had been destroyed by a storm on the evening of Thursday, Aug. 28, 2026, at Ignite Market outside the Booster Juice Recreation Centre.
Boucher returned to the site and took back some items such as tablecloths and left others. When she returned to the rec centre parking lot on Friday, she saw a mess of jumbled tent frames strewn throughout the grounds.
“I couldn’t find the curtain and the banner, so we kind of just started walking around and looking for our stuff,” said Boucher, who also had help from her sister. Eventually they found their missing things in a pile along with other vendors’ items.
“Those canopy tents, they didn’t stand a chance.”
Boucher considered herself one of the lucky ones because she didn’t leave all her booth items out on Thursday night, while other vendors did and were left searching through the debris in the morning. In a social media post from Thursday night, vendor Pasta Pantry showed the aftermath of the storm, with tents folded over and items toppled, undoing hours of preparation.
A Weather Canada representative confirmed on Friday that heavy wind tied to a thunderstorm moved through Edmonton the previous night, with some wind registered as reaching 60 km/h.
IgNite Night Market organizers were credited with working through the night and morning to clean up and set up the event, set to run Friday through Sunday. As of Friday afternoon, the market was still on schedule to open.
Volunteers clean up tents that had been destroyed by a storm on the evening of Thursday, Aug. 28, 2026, at Ignite Market outside the Booster Juice Recreation Centre.
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