The Soda Fest 2026 is on Sunday, Sept. 13 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Sapperton Park. Hosted by the Sapperton Business Collective, in partnership with the City of New Westminster, Heartberry Soda and City to Suburb Realty, the event will feature craft sodas from B.C.-based businesses in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
Attendees will get a tasting cup for sampling a variety of sodas and non-alcoholic beverages.
“They could buy whatever they sampled and liked,” Gladman said of last year’s event. “We had some live music and some games for people to play. It was really fun.”
Alex Jopson, who is the collective’s president and one of the founders of Another Beer Company, which was founded and located in New West until it closed in September 2024, dreamed up the idea of a soda festival.
“Craft soda particularly is becoming more of a thing in Canada,” Gladman said. “[Alex Jopson] started having conversations with different craft soda companies and thought, ‘I don’t think anyone is doing a soda festival. I’ve never heard of that before.’”
I’m confused; “soda” is the American term isn’t it? I’ve never heard it called that in Canada; only pop and soda pop.
Right? Maybe it’s more regional than we think? I remember even in the US, I was surprised to see it’s split nearly 50/50 (plus ‘coke’ in the south).
Also, I didn’t think pop needed support. If anything, the world should drink less of it.
According to this survey/study, the vast majority of Canadians do call it pop or soft drink, but some people still call it soda:
https://www.queensu.ca/strathy/sites/stratwww/files/uploaded_files/Pop Results.pdf
I also found this, and it’s probably worth a separate post of its own: https://imgur.com/a/results-from-canada-based-linguistic-regionalism-survey-OOF6p
In this case I think it comes down to branding