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The Edmonton International Street Performers Festival runs for 10 days every July and brings the world's best street performers to Churchill Square.

I think Edmonton's one of the best kept secrets in the country. Certainly this is true in the theatre business, and it has been for a long time. It has its ups and downs. I mean you can't say any place is idyllic, but there are so many opportunities here. The generosity of the community is huge. It's allowed me to do all kinds of crazy things like being a dung beetle and hanging off the side of the National Bank Building downtown dressed like a 21st century gargoyle.

And then I had this idea of turning myself into The Human Fountain. Complete with water.

I remember building it. All those times I yelled up at Annie through the window, “Hey what do you think of this? What do you think of this!” And she was just like, “Do you really need to have a pool that big?” She got me a little 4-foot Barbie pool. She didn't understand. I had to be in the middle of it. It had to be huge. It's gotta be big otherwise it's not worth it. So now I have this 12-foot pool. I don't know how many gallons of water it takes. It's probably really wasteful.

But it's been in great demand ever since I did it the first time here in Edmonton at the 2006 Street Performers Festival. It's been to Ireland, Leduc, Banff, Vancouver, Sherwood Park, Waterloo. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that to happen. I thought I'd do it once and then that would be it. We put it on the Johnny Rains website.

I love that I have a backyard here where I can build things and I love working in the garden and having ideas like the fountain. That freedom, that opportunity to just let your mind wander and create something. I think that's a real gift to have. It's so much work. But you just do it because you can. And because there are people like Shelley Switzer (she's the artistic producer for the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival) who just listens to an idiotic idea and thinks it’s awesome. Who says, “You wanna be a fountain? Okay. Yeah, we’ll make it happen.”

We're so lucky. Me and Annie keep saying that all the time: how lucky we are that we live here and that we have this life.