Osheaga will feature singer Debbie Harry seen here performing with Blondie in London, May 3, 2017. (Photo by Grant Pollard/Invision/AP)

Osheaga: from Blondie to Bedouin Soundclash

Osheaga, the three-day music and arts festival, starts at noon today on Ile Notre Dame in the St. Lawrence River, next to Montreal.

“the people of the shaking hands”

It may be a great family affair this weekend with ’80’s power punk band Blondie, featuring the wonderful Debbie Harry, and all the younger new bands that fill cell phones these days.

Osheaga site with concert goers filling it up this afternoon. An intense heat wave moving in Sunday has organizers cautioning people to keep hydrated. (Osheaga)

Organizers are cautioning concert-goers, however, to be prepared for the coming heat.

Temperatures are expected to reach as high as 39 C on Sunday as an intense heat wave moves in, according to  Environment Canada meteorologist Steve Boily.

“If you have to do anything outside, just be careful,” said Boily. “Don’t do too much. Don’t spend too much time in this exhausting heat. Hydrate yourself, for sure.”

The name for the festival comes from an Iroquois word, and possibly the first misunderstanding between the French explorers and the people of the St. Lawrence River.

This is how it’s described on the festival’s web site:

Osheaga was a name used for the area that is now Montreal by some of the first European settlers in the region. The name is said to originate from Jacques Cartier when he met the Iroquoians near the Lachine rapids in what is now Montreal. But so the Iroquoian oral history goes the white man was waving with his hands, either offering to shake hands or asking about rapids on the river. The astonished Iroquoians looked at each other and said “O she ha ga” which meant people of shaking hands. From the meeting Cartier transcribed the word Osheaga as meaning large rapids while the Iroquoian would use the oral phrase to describe where they met the people of the shaking hands.

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