Now, you may wonder where we got this name from and what it means...
Since we are focusing on Western Canadian artists, we were looking for something that evoked that feeling. One of us here at Box Social is from Winnipeg, where a social is a weekly event. Socials are fundraisers for weddings, sports groups, charities, you name it. You basically buy a ticket, spend several hours in a community hall listening to a bad dj while drinking low-end booze, all to support your friends, co-workers, second-cousins twice-removed, in the hope that they will reciprocate when it is your turn to host. The best part (in my opinion) of the social was the rye bread, kielbasa, and cheese that came out at midnight. Socials are something that seems to be uniquely Manitoban, even though I have heard that in Saskatchewan (can anyone confirm?), similar events are called cabarets.
Social was one of those words that came up when we thought of Western Canada.
Box socials apparently originated in the 1920's. They were also fundraisers held in community halls, but fine young ladies would put together a lunch box which the men would bid on to raise their funds and if they were lucky they may also get a date out of the deal. A much nicer thought than the smell of stale beer and fold-up wooden tables. Simple and quirky, much like us.