Thunder Bay BandWiki

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Thunder Bay BandWiki was an independent community-maintained database of bands, events, and figures in the Thunder Bay, Ontario area. It is reproduced here for historical reference; its contents have not been independently verified.

It was a project run by Kevin Sidlar and Kasey Patola with 165 other contributors from 2004 - 2024, with most articles created before July 2014.

The entire wiki and its edit history has been ingested into Thunderbay.Wiki; all articles are tagged with "Category:ThunderBay_BandWiki"

Its 167 contributors created ~2700 articles and ~200 categories.

History

  • The bandwiki was started by Kevin Sidlar aka "tjernobyl" around 2004; the first Wayback Machine sample was on 10 June 2004 [1].
  • Tjernobyl is the person responsible for founding, maintaining and contributing the most information for the bandwiki.
  • Prior to 2008, the Thunder Bay Bandwiki was hosted on a private server by user tjernobyl on his tjernobyl.org domain. It was run on David Barrett's "Qwiki" hosting engine ([2], not to be confused with the unrelated application also called Qwiki acquired by Yahoo.com in 2013), rather than MediaWiki [3]. It was migrated to MediaWiki on 30 September 2008, and began to be hosted at bandwiki.ca in 2008. An early version before the MediaWiki migration is archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050204060720/http://www.tjernobyl.org/bandwiki/
  • In 2008, the site was moved to user Kasey Patola (aka destructo)'s server under the bandwiki.ca domain
  • From 2008 to 2024 it was available at http://www.bandwiki.ca. From 2021 to 2024, it was being maintained by Kasey Patola [4] who gave his email at the time as "destructo(at)bandwiki.ca".
  • In approximately 2015, the site became inactive and the domain ownership was eventually put up for auction
  • On 4 September 2021 [5], Patola purchased the domain and began administering and maintaining the site, with permission from tjernobyl.
  • Around 2024 the website went defunct.
  • In June 2026 Michael B. Currie imported the contents and redirected bandwiki.ca to ThunderBay.wiki, with generous support from both Kevin and Kasey. He renewed the bandwiki.ca name on 27 June 2026.


Overview

According to the Thunder Bay BandWiki, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic Thunder Bay had an active local music scene spanning nearly every genre. The downtown Port Arthur district hosted multiple venues that regularly promoted local and touring acts. The Thunder Bay Auditorium and outdoor festival spaces at the Marina also served as significant concert venues. Thunder Bay's position on the Trans-Canada Highway — the only route connecting Winnipeg to the west and Sault Ste. Marie to the east — made it a frequent stop for touring punk and metal bands travelling by van or car across Canada.

The BandWiki notes that major out-of-town and touring acts regularly visited the city alongside the robust local scene.

Genres represented

Genres documented in the Thunder Bay BandWiki include Hip Hop, Jazz, Punk, Metal, Black Metal, Rock, Electronic, Country, and Psychobilly.

Notable local events

The Thunder Bay BandWiki documents a number of recurring and one-time local music events, including:

Local compilations

Local music compilations documented by the Thunder Bay BandWiki include: Hot Smoke And Sassafras, It Came From Thunder Bay, Thunderground, An Anthology of Underground Music in Canada Vol. IV, Homegrown, Thunderbands 1991, Thunder Bay Blues Sampler 2004, Revolution Music Compilations, Darwin Music Canada Compilation, and the Baycore Compilations series.

Import notes

The initial import in June 2026 from the old BandWiki wiki -> ThunderBay.Wiki was mostly cut off at articles and edits before July 2014 because after this, spammers apparently discovered bandwiki.ca and started posting spam articles. However, some articles created after this were imported in a second phase on 28 June 2026.

This is visible in the below article counts by month: 

ubuntu@ip-172-31-36-61:~$ cat /home/ubuntu/bandwiki-import/staged/creation_counts_by_month.csv
month,total_pages,ns0_main,ns2_user,ns6_file,ns14_category,other_ns
2008-09,1497,1495,1,0,1,0
2008-10,340,192,4,84,52,8
2008-11,97,58,0,37,2,0
2008-12,380,139,1,232,2,6
2009-01,257,197,1,44,2,13
2009-02,36,15,2,19,0,0
2009-03,10,2,0,5,0,3
2009-04,15,7,0,4,0,4
2009-05,19,10,1,6,0,2
2009-06,19,15,0,4,0,0
2009-07,22,16,0,6,0,0
2009-08,25,14,1,10,0,0
2009-09,15,7,0,7,0,1
2009-10,20,3,0,17,0,0
2009-11,37,36,0,1,0,0
2009-12,92,50,1,41,0,0
2010-01,192,80,1,82,26,3
2010-02,24,20,3,1,0,0
2010-03,12,6,0,6,0,0
2010-04,24,9,2,4,0,9
2010-05,7,3,0,0,0,4
2010-06,8,4,0,3,0,1
2010-07,6,4,0,2,0,0
2010-08,13,7,0,2,0,4
2010-09,21,9,0,11,0,1
2010-10,10,9,0,1,0,0
2010-11,15,11,0,4,0,0
2010-12,2,2,0,0,0,0
2011-01,11,3,0,7,0,1
2011-02,3,1,0,0,0,2
2011-03,3,1,0,2,0,0
2011-04,13,4,0,8,0,1
2011-05,3,2,0,1,0,0
2011-06,13,7,1,5,0,0
2011-08,3,1,0,2,0,0
2011-09,1,0,0,1,0,0
2011-10,2,1,0,1,0,0
2011-11,15,1,1,13,0,0
2011-12,2,2,0,0,0,0
2012-01,2,1,0,1,0,0
2012-02,31,15,1,14,0,1
2012-03,1,1,0,0,0,0
2012-04,7,3,0,4,0,0
2012-05,7,3,0,3,0,1
2012-06,1,1,0,0,0,0
2012-08,56,51,0,3,0,2
2012-09,8,7,0,1,0,0
2012-10,1,1,0,0,0,0
2012-11,11,4,0,7,0,0
2012-12,2,2,0,0,0,0
2013-01,7,7,0,0,0,0
2013-02,3,0,0,3,0,0
2013-05,5,2,0,3,0,0
2013-06,154,0,150,0,0,4
2013-09,1,1,0,0,0,0
2013-10,6,0,0,6,0,0
2013-11,3,0,0,3,0,0
2014-01,2,1,0,0,0,1
2014-02,3,0,0,3,0,0
2014-04,1,1,0,0,0,0
2014-07,10,9,0,0,0,1
2014-08,758,567,191,0,0,0
2014-09,1652,983,667,0,0,2
2014-10,1408,610,794,0,0,4
2014-11,3577,1984,1574,0,0,19
2014-12,8671,7446,1224,0,0,1
2015-01,2324,1605,710,0,0,9
2015-03,2,1,1,0,0,0
2015-04,14,12,2,0,0,0
2015-05,2,0,2,0,0,0
2015-07,4,3,1,0,0,0
2015-09,1,0,1,0,0,0
2015-12,2,0,2,0,0,0
2016-01,1,0,1,0,0,0
2016-04,1,0,1,0,0,0
2016-07,1,0,0,0,0,1
2016-09,3,3,0,0,0,0
2016-11,1,1,0,0,0,0
2018-04,7,4,0,3,0,0
2018-08,1,1,0,0,0,0
2021-09,2,2,0,0,0,0
2023-03,1,0,1,0,0,0
2024-01,1,0,1,0,0,0
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