Next weekend, September 11-12, downtown Fergus, Ontario gets the full SteamPunk treatment. Cogs & Clockwork is back for its 4th annual run, and the lineup is not playing around: Steam Powered Giraffe headlines with ticketed shows at the Fergus Grand Theatre Friday and Saturday nights, fresh off their stint at Weekend at the Asylum. Professor Elemental and Johnny Sprocket from The Cog is Dead are also on the bill. That is, frankly, an embarrassing amount of talent for one Victorian street festival and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

The daytime events are free, which is the correct price for robot races, teapot races, tea dueling, puppet shows, circus performers, a toy boat race, a scavenger hunt, and a chess match against an actual international chess master. Fashion shows and artist demos round it out on Provost Lane. And yes, there is a festival-exclusive red ale called Clockwork Rouge being poured at The Outpost taproom all weekend. A steampunk festival with its own bespoke beer is operating at a level the Doctor fully endorses. High-5, Fergus.

Fergus is about 100km west of Toronto, and the timing is cleverly staged the weekend before the Amherstburg festival, so if you are the kind of person who chain-runs steampunk events across Ontario (you know who you are, you glorious disaster), this is your double-header. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a solid convention itinerary comes close. Via: Downtown Fergus

Britain has a Victorian waterworks in Nottingham that fires up its original 1880s James Watt beam engines, opens the underground reservoir, and once a year lets the Steampunk community take over the whole magnificent, gear-laden, boiler-heated cathedral of a building. This weekend was that weekend. The 10th Annual Steampunk Steam Event at Papplewick Pumping Station ran July 11-12, and if you weren’t there, you were somewhere objectively worse.

The lineup: Alice Strange on Saturday, Professor Elemental on Sunday (with a noon Rap School, because of course), Tea Dueling with Steampunk Shenanigans, over 30 trade stalls, and the engines in full steam the entire time. A Victorian pumping station that is a Scheduled Ancient Monument running its 1883 Lancashire boilers while costumed gogglers duel with teacups. The Omega7Red Formulae did not need to be applied here. The universe already did the work.

Year ten. High-5, Papplewick. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but ten years of keeping this alive on volunteer power comes close.