Vancouver and Beyond

A money-nabbing plot is hatched.

Where: Gateway Theatre
6500 Gilbert Road
Richmond, BC V7C 3V4
When: Oct 09-25, 2008
Meet Jack and Leo, English Shakespearean actors whose fortunes have sunk to performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in rural Pennsylvania.

Hearing that a wealthy matron in nearby York is about to die, they conspire to impersonate her two long lost nephews and get the cash. The trouble is, the missing relatives aren’t nephews, but nieces! Add in some romance and mischief, and try to keep up as, undaunted, these two thespians forge ahead with their harebrained scheme!

Tags: british columbia, canada, october, theatre, vancouver

Welcome to Wine 2008

Red and White and All That Sparkles” a unique Wine and Food Tasting Adventure Fundraising Party at Grouse Mountain
Saturday eve November 1st
Hosted by: 95 Crave’s Nat Hunter and Drew Savage

$150 per ticket (a portion of the ticket is tax receiptable).

Situated at the top of spectacular Grouse Mountain, 350 guests ride up to the Peak of Vancouver and enter the enchanting Lupins restaurant at the heart of the Alpine Lodge. Here, surrounded by breath taking views, our acclaimed “Wine on the Mountain” wine and food pairing fundraising party, benefiting the Adoptive Families Association of BC, begins. Our fabulous wine affair is not just for the most experienced of palettes; whether you’re a connoisseur or not, you can indulge your senses tasting wine from around the world and have fun taking part in a “People’s Choice” for the best wine. Highlights include live music with The Glenn Riley Quartet and special guest Gabriel Mark Hasselbach, tantalizing hors d’oeuvres presented by Grouse Mountain’s award winning Chef Dino. A premium Silent Auction presented by Scotiabank, a Distinct Wine Auction with exclusive wines presented by Fire Fly Fine Wines and Ales and the back by popular demand Live Auction “Wall of Wine” presented by Artisan Wine Company and Custom Cellars, a wine lover’s dream package with over 100 bottles of award winning wines with your very own wine cellar. Our popular Trip Raffle is back with an Okanagan Wine Adventure for 4 and a Wine Whistler Excursion for 2. New this year, is a dynamic sabering show with house wine and the not to be missed “Chocolate Cellar.”

Grouse Mountain’s wine experts will be on hand all evening as you seek out your perfect wine and food pairing. As a special bonus, all tickets include a chance to win a private and exclusivetasting with Grouse Mountain’s Head Sommelier where 24 lucky winners will learn to taste like a professional while exploring a range of wine styles.

Don’t miss out on this year’s exciting theme “Red and White and All That Sparkles” featuring: Fine red and white wines from around the world paired with food by Grouse Mountain’s award winning chef. Food and wine tasting adventures with Sparkling Beverages, Chocolates, Sake Tastings, Ciders, Ports,Champagnes, Fine Ales, Puddifoots Specialty Glassware, Decadent Crackers, Unique Cheeses and more.

Special guests, Senator Larry Campbell and John Schreiner BC’s very own wine expert.

Tickets are limited and sell out each year.
To view photos and videos of the event please visit our facebook site at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=23198707103

For more information please visit our website www.bcadoption.com

Tickets for the event – click here

Tags: bcadoption, british columbia, canada, vancouver, wine festival

One of the leading lights of modern rock and roll.

Where: Canada Hockey Place
800 Griffiths Way
Vancouver, BC V6B 6G1
When: Oct 22, 2008, Wed 7:00 pm

Neil Young is one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers. In a career that extends back to his mid-Sixties roots as a coffeehouse folkie in his native Canada, this principled and unpredictable maverick has pursued an often winding course across the rock and roll landscape. He’s been a cult hero, a chart-topping rock star, and all things in-between, remaining true to his restless muse all the while. At various times, Young has delved into folk, country, garage-rock and grunge.

Several of his more modest-selling titles contain some of his most trenchant performances. It is typical of Young that he followed his most polished and popular album with one of his most raw and uncommercial. While he’s avoided sticking to one style for very long, the unifying factors throughout Young’s peripatetic musical journey have been his unmistakable voice, his raw and expressive guitar playing, and his consummate songwriting skill.

www.neilyoung.com

Tags: british columbia, canada, concert, music, neil young, vancouver

From humble beginnings in a rural French Canadian home town, Céline Dion has risen to international superstardom like a shooting star.
Where: Canada Hockey Place
800 Griffiths Way
Vancouver, BC V6B 6G1
When: Oct 20, 2008, Mon 8:00 pm
Details: $62.50-$520
Céline has been called the premier contemporary pop vocalist of the Nineties. She has earned music industry accolades from around the world: Grammy Awards in the US, Juno and Felix Awards in Canada, and World Music Awards in Europe. The entire world has seen Céline Dion literally transform herself from a gifted pre-adolescent into an international superstar.

Born in Charlemagne (a small town 30 miles east of Montréal, Québec, Canada), Céline is the youngest of 14 children of a highly musical family. Her parents, both musicians, operated a small club, and on weekends, the entire family performed and entertained the local population. From the tender age of 5, Céline sang with her siblings and quickly acquired the ability to perform live. At the age of twelve, together with her mother and one of her brothers, Céline composed a French song which would forever alter the course of her life.
http://www.celinedion.com/

Purchase tickets – click here

Tags: british columbia, canada hockey place, celine dion, music, october, vancouver

The Vancouver International Writers Festival is one of North America’s premiere literary events, held annually over 6 days in late October.

Where: Granville Island
Vancouver, BC V6H3R8
When: Oct 21-26, 2008
Details: For more information please see link below.

It was inaugurated in 1988 as the brainchild of founding Artistic Director Alma Lee. Now under the artistic direction of Hal Wake, the Writers Festival attracts the world’s best writers to Vancouver. Internationally renowned and undiscovered authors mingle with 11,000 readers of all ages in intimate, interactive and informal settings on Granville Island, an urban oasis in the heart of Vancouver.

In its 19 year history the Festival has presented luminaries such as Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Maeve Binchy, Peter Carey, Roddy Doyle, Timothy Findley, Tomson Highway, John Irving, P.D. James, Thomas Keneally, Rohinton Mistry, Frank McCourt, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Anita Rau Badami, JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Carol Shields. The Writers Festival also produces special events throughout the year featuring the best of Canadian and international writers.
www.writersfest.bc.ca

Tags: british columbia, canada, granville island, october, vancouver international writers festival

By Hal Wake (written for the 25th anniversary of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival)

To achieve the status of a true legend, it should have started differently. It should have started with the artistic director of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Mitch Podolak, looking across the prairies fixing his penetrating, visionary gaze westward and determining right then and there that he was going to establish a folk music festival in Vancouver. It was the mid-seventies and what better time to deliver the joyous sound and enriching experience for the benefit of the masses. But this isn’t Hollywood, thank god, and the reality is that Mitch simply wanted to escape the mosquitoes and biting cold of Winnipeg for a softer life in Lotus Land. Mitch never achieved his dream of making a home here, but, thank god again, the Festival did.

The first step in executing his plan was finding a local champion, preferably one with money. He found one, or perhaps more accurately created one, in Ernie Fladell. Ernie was the Cultural Planner in the Social Planning Department for the City of Vancouver. He’d actually turned a profit on a couple of events in Vancouver, but he had never been to a folk festival. .Well, Mitch fixed that. In 1977 he sent Ernie a plane ticket for Winnipeg and said “Get your ass out here and I’ll show you what it’s all about.”

Twenty-six years later, Ernie’s memory of the trip is crystal clear. “Mitch had me picked up at the airport and then took me on these winding back roads, in the dark and it seemed to take forever. Finally, I was dropped off in some parking lot and I had no idea where I was. Someone grabbed me by the elbow and we were stumbling along and suddenly I was led up some steps backstage and a guy said, ‘Hi, I’m Mitch,’ and he shoved me past the edge of a curtain and there I was, practically on stage with Sweet Honey in the Rock in front of 15,000 delirious fans. I was hooked.”

Mitch agrees that’s how it happened, but it was all part of the plan. “I set him up. I had it all timed meticulously from the moment the plane landed, including the long car ride. I didn’t want him to ease into it. I wanted to get Ernie swept away. I timed the entire show so that he would have something incredible to see and it worked.”

A year later at Stanley Park, the euphoria of the Winnipeg stage had given way to opening night jitters at the birth of a brand new festival. A Vancouver team had been established including an energetic city staffer, Frances Fitzgibbon, her colleague, lanky site manager, Lorenz von Fersen, and a young political organizer named Gary Cristall.

They weren’t building the event from scratch, however. Volunteers from Winnipeg had taken time off work, piled into cars and at their own expense, driven all the way to Vancouver to help out. Each Winnipegger was paired with a volunteer from Vancouver so that their hard-won experience in mastering the immense task of mounting the event could be passed on.

Frances Fitzgibbon confesses she expressed some misgivings “When Mitch first raised the idea of a volunteer cadre, I thought, ‘ gosh, wouldn’t it be more efficient with paid staff?’ I was absolutely dead wrong. When you have people meeting, talking, caring, taking responsibility – they poured their heart into everything. It was actually very moving.” Since that first Festival, some of the original volunteers have returned every year to form the network that has become the backbone of the operation.

One of the responsibilities that wasn’t taken on by volunteers at that first Festival was security. Lorenz von Fersen remembers a bunch of beefy guys in blue who were used to rousting rowdies from the PNE. When a bus full of cymbal-playing gate crashers in saffron-coloured robes insinuated their way into a parking lot and refused to pay, Gary Cristall and Mitch Podolak decided to handle it themselves.

“I was trying to be the good cop,” Mitch explains. “But Gary just came up and said, ‘Move the bus or we’ll push it into the ocean.’ And they moved.” Despite that “success”, it was an area that clearly needed improvement. When Alice Macpherson suggested enlisting a volunteer committee to develop a new approach to security, they went with it. To this day, a well-trained, experienced volunteer group uses equal measures of reason and firmness to defuse difficult situations at the Festival. They are so good you often don’t realize they are there.

According to the founders, it required similar sophisticated skills to convince the Park Board to agree to the use of Jericho Beach Park for the second and subsequent Festivals. Managing the site to minimize disturbance for the neighbourhood, the wildlife and the environment, has been critical to the continued success of the Festival. Managing the political process has been no mean feat either. “It seemed like every year,” says Gary Cristall, “We’d go to Park Board and come out of there with a 4-3 vote in our favour. One vote going the other way, and the whole thing would have been over.”

On the first night, of the very first Vancouver Folk Music Festival, it rained. “We didn’t know whether anyone was going to come – period – and then the rain started to come down,” Gary Cristall remembers thinking. Frances still has a vision of the splashback bouncing onto the stage, but the performers kept going.

Curiously, the program for the first Festival doesn’t list the performers for the evening concerts. One member of the hardy band of onlookers in the audience remembers being entranced by the sweet – almost to the point of painful – harmonies of Mary McCaslin and Jim Ringer. Ernie Fladell has a clear picture of Stan Rogers and his booming voice, his powerful presence bathed in the brilliant colours of the stage lights, with steam rising off his head. “When Stan came off he said it was like singing behind a waterfall.”

“Later that night,” says Gary Cristall, “when Pied Pear worked their magic and got a standing ovation in the rain, I knew we were on to something.”

Saturday afternoon, the rain mercifully ended and with the sun now shining and with the magnificent ocean and mountain backdrop at the Point Stage, Mitch Podolak witnessed the single best blues workshop he has ever seen in a lifetime of festivals. “There was Leon Redbone, Odetta, Leon Bibb and John Hammond. But it was Roosevelt Sykes, the 70-year-old piano player, that really blew me away. He was joined on stage by Jane Vasey the young pianist for the Downchild Blues Band who wasn’t even a guest at the Festival. And at the end of what seemed like an hour of furious, brilliant jamming, he stood up and turned to her, took off his hat and bowed.”

No one knows for sure, but the most common estimate is that there were somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 folks at that first Festival. Enough, it seems, to have convinced all concerned that it was worth the effort and struggle to do it all over again for another year and another and twenty-two more, which brings us to this weekend, July 19-21 2002. Frances Fitzgibbon isn’t surprised. “All of us had the belief that it would be around for twenty-five years. We didn’t publicly talk about the longevity of it, but the idea was strong and rooted somewhere real. People come to the festival and leave the site altered, different somehow.”

For the founders and their successors, it is like building a miraculous community every year. They come to one of the most gorgeous settings in the world, bring in the power, water and the amenities, then the musicians arrive and the audience and then, in Mitch Podolak’s words, “You enter a special world. You step outside normal society for three days and enjoy a totally non-alienating experience. What could be better?”

What could be better indeed.

Tags: british columbia, canada, culture, folk festival, music, vancouver

Four historically-themed titles have been selected as finalists for the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award: a collection of real life stories that bring to life the social histories of selected heritage homes in Vancouver; a biography of dance-artist Peter Bingham, a driving force in Canada’s contact improvisation scene for 30 years; a poetic portrait of the many lives affected by the Second Narrows Bridge disaster of 1958; and a book of stories and photographs documenting the lives of the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

“These four books add significant textural layers to our understanding of Vancouver’s neighbourhoods, culture and individuals,” said Mayor Sam Sullivan. “My congratulations to the finalists and their publishers for their contributions to Vancouver’s cultural richness.”

The 2008 finalists are:

At Home With History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes by Eve Lazarus (Anvil Press, Vancouver), is a social history and genealogy that reveals much about the history of the times and offers a sense of place in the ongoing narrative of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver.

Falsework by Gary Geddes (Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, New Brunswick), is a multi-voiced, inquisitive new kind of poetry that provides portraits of the many lives affected by the crumbling of the Second Narrows Bridge in 1958, a seemingly indomitable structure.

Hope in Shadows by Brad Cran and Gillian Jerome (Arsenal Pulp Press and Pivot Legal Society, Vancouver), are photographs taken by the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, accompanied by the personal stories of the men and women behind these stunning images.

The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham by Kaija Pepper (Dance Collection Press, Toronto), is a meticulously researched insight into Peter Bingham’s contact improvisation and choreography along with photographs that take the reader inside the mind of a quiet, respectful but determined artist who has kept dancing through three turbulent decades of challenge and change.

The four shortlisted titles were chosen by an independent jury that included freelance editor (and former Publisher at Raincoast Books/Polestar) Michelle Benjamin; Sophia Books owner Marc Fournier; and Fernanda Viveiros, Executive Director of the Federation of BC Writers.This jury will also select the winning entry.

Mayor Sullivan will present the award and the $2,000 cash prize to the winning author on October 14, 2008. This year, the City of Vancouver Book Award celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Media contact:

Corporate Communications
604.871.6336

Tags: british columbia, canada, culture, vancouver