Author: Lisa Hale

Outside the Ukrainian Hall in Strathcona, a young woman stood on the sidewalk, quietly playing a vaguely Eastern European-sounding tune.  But this was no traditional squeezebox concert geared for a polka-loving crowd.  Inside the hall, devotees of the accordion gathered on wooden chairs.  Dreadlocked punks with painted faces sat next to young hipsters and middle-aged men with grey ponytails and black berets.

Saturday’s concert, the penultimate event in the week-long Accordion Noir festival, opened with the anarcho-punk sounds of Vancouver-island’s Ursula.  Under the deep red curtains of the Ukrainian hall, a banjo, an accordion and a single drum inspired the gathered crowd of accordion enthusiasts to stomp their feet and cheer wildly.

“The accordion doesn’t only have to be a punch line,” said festival organizer Rowan Lipkovits, “real music can be done on the squeezebox.”  Lipkovits described the prejudice against the accordion as stemming, in part, from what he calls “Lawrence Welk champagne music.”  But those that dismiss the instrument as only being engineered to play polka are missing a whole world of music that is often dark and edgy.  Lipkovits said that the accordion is experiencing a renaissance as young people pick up the instrument and challenge the guitar’s hegemony in popular music.

Bruce Triggs, who, along with Lipkovits, started the radio show that gives its name to the festival, sees the accordion as having “a bunch of qualities that make it different and cool.”  He cited the instrument’s loudness, portability and its ability to play both rhythm and melody at the same time as being key features.  He described playing his accordion at the Seattle WTO protests in 1999.

While the older generation might think of Welk and dismiss the accordion, Triggs said that today’s young people have no real reason to be prejudiced against the instrument he described as “viscerally cool.”  Triggs reeled off an exhaustive list of accordion-oriented bands, spanning from the Finnish heavy metal of Turisas to the folk-punk sounds of Saint Petersburg-based Iva Nova.  He said that the radio show receives about 20 new cds of accordion music each week.

With a weekly radio show and podcast boasting as many as 3000 downloads, a monthly squeezebox circle and an annual festival that strained capacity at local venues, the edgy renaissance of the accordion appears to be gaining a strong hold in Vancouver’s music scene.

On Thursday, a small group of parents, educators and community leaders gathered in Strathcona community centre for a meeting about school closures in East Vancouver.  The driving rain likely kept many at home, but those that did show up to the small room on the community centre’s ground floor spoke passionately about keeping schools like Seymour and Queen Alexandra Elementary open.

Jenny Kwan, MLA for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, moderated a panel discussion about the effects of cuts to education spending.

For Andrea Esslemont, an Aboriginal mother living in Strathcona, the closing of Seymour Elementary school means a huge upheaval.  Esslemont, a mother of three, used to transport her ten year old daughter, who has special needs, to a school outside of the neighbourhood.  She worked for a year to get her child into a school closer to her home.  Within weeks of her daughter starting school, Esslemont found out that Seymour had been identified as one of 11 possible school closures.

Having her daughter at a school in the neighbourhood is important for Esslemont because she believes that there is more community support available there.  She said that going to a school nearby means that her daughter works with people who know her and can keep her safe.  She worries about her daughter getting lost in the system if she attends a larger school.  She is also concerned about the logistics of moving her daughter elsewhere.

Chrystal Tabobandung, from the Ojibwe nation, has four boys attending Queen Alexandra Elementary.  “I haven’t considered it,” she said when asked what she’d do if the school closed, “I’m going to fight with everything I have.”  Tabobandung called for parents to join together and act, rather than relying on petitions and meetings to stop the government’s planned closures.

Noel Herron, former principal of Strathcona Elementary school, highlighted the vulnerability of inner city students.  While the government cites declining enrollment as a reason for closing the schools, Herron believes that smaller classes are necessary for children in the area.  He also pointed to the role of schools as resource centres for the neighbourhood.  “You close a school, you close the heart of a community,” he said.

Andrea Potter stood in front of a row of gleaming jars filled with small green cucumbers.  She used her fingers to push down the cucumbers as she poured salty water over them.  Elsewhere on the table, a tall beige pot held freshly shredded cabbage and apple, a mixture that will become sauerkraut after a few weeks of fermentation.  A bright pink mixture of red and green cabbage showcased the final product of the process, giving off a pleasantly light pickled scent.

Potter is a holistic nutritionist and chef.  On Saturday, she was staffing a booth at Trout Lake farmer’s market.  She was invited to the event to show people how to preserve food using the lacto-fermentation process, rather than canning or pickling their produce.  Shoppers at the market stopped by Potter’s booth to ask questions and share stories of their own attempts at food preservation.

Potter’s booth was just one of the many activities and vendors at Saturday’s market.  Under another awning, market goers swapped cookbooks with each other.  Musicians entertained shoppers in the shade of a tall tree at the centre of the market.

At the far end of the line of white, blue and green tents, a small purple trailer was surrounded by hungry people queuing for large buckwheat crepes with fillings such as pesto, Vancouver-island brie and locally grown salad greens.  Another trailer served lattes and iced coffees, which people sipped as they browsed through the abundance of fresh local fruit and vegetables.

According to manager Anita Georgy, fall is one of the best seasons to visit the market.  She eagerly described the variety of produce available, noting that local cranberries and hazelnuts had just arrived that day.  For Georgy, markets are important because they serve as a bridge between the people who grow food and those who eat it.  She noted that the number of customers at the market is increasing and many people bring their children with them.

Perhaps one of the biggest draws of the market is the chance to be in touch with the seasons and support the local economy.  Vancouver residents can meet their local farmers and craftspeople at Trout Lake Saturday markets until Thanksgiving.

“Hey girlfriend!” said Michael Harris to a woman seated in the front row.  Both laughed, clearly pleased to see each other.

Around the room, a similar scene played itself out as new people entered the large gymnasium at Vancouver’s Aboriginal Friendship Centre.  Every Wednesday is West Coast night at the centre, with a different First Nation hosting the evening.

The room was set up with plastic chairs arranged in rows surrounding a large open space in the centre of the gym.  Music played over a crackling loudspeaker hanging from the ceiling.  Along the walls, stands were set up with jewelry and crafts for sale.  A large booth in the corner was piled high with t-shirts and baseball hats with dazzling metallic patterns.  Near the door, pamphlets and a poster board provided information on the Helping Spirit Lodge Society, an organization that works to prevent violence in the community.

Along the wall closest to the gym’s door two women were kept busy selling golden rounds of bannock, fruit salad and lemon meringue pie.  Large jars of peanut butter and jam were lined up on the table, ready to be spread on the homemade bannock.

This week no specific nation hosted, so the event became an open mic night.  Harris, one of three masters of ceremonies for the evening, told jokes and short stories to warm up the crowd.  He then gave a warm welcome to newcomers to the event.  He also greeted regulars, pointing out well-known artists and groups of people from different Aboriginal communities in the crowd.  He urged all those in attendance to bring family members who might be visiting Vancouver to West Coast night.  Harris then invited anyone with a drum to come up and sing.

Soon people started filtering to the front to join in traditional songs from the Kwakwaka’wakw and other nations.  In the crowd, some listened to the music while others chatted in small groups.  Children ran around the edges of the gym, playing tag and laughing.  In the front row, a little girl who seemed to have just started walking bounced unsteadily to the music.  She wandered closer to the singers clapping her hands, a huge grin on her face.

Blue and red flashing lights, uniformed officers and an explosives detection dog are usually signs that a major incident is happening in East Vancouver.  But on Sunday, these were part of the draw to Cops, Kids & Woodland Park, a family-friendly event put on by the Grandview-Woodlands Community Policing Centre.

Some East Vancouver communities have a rocky relationship with the Vancouver Police Department, with distrust being a fairly common sentiment in the area.  For Adrian Archambault, coordinator for community policing with the centre, the point of Sunday’s event was outreach to the community’s youngest members and their families.  The goal of community policing, according to Archambault, is to provide a bridge between the police and the people who live in the neighbourhood.

The annual event is usually held in Grandview Park, but moved to Woodland Park this year because of Grandview’s closure in August.  Archambault hopes that the event will encourage families to make more use of Woodland Park, which is located just off the Adanac bike route.

The theme for the day was back-to-school safety, with 50 volunteers on hand to help with child identification, bike safety and face painting.  Prabhjot Sandhar, 15, has been volunteering at events like these for the last three years.  She helps out at the community policing centre because she wants to become a police officer.

The flashing lights of a fire truck proved to be one of the day’s major draws, as children were given the opportunity to clamber into the cab for a photo.  A small crowd also formed around two-year-old Bailey, a black Labrador eager for pats from the gathered children.  Handler Constable John Alleman of the transit police explained Bailey’s role as an explosives detection dog working mostly in the Skytrain system.  Alleman tries to bring Bailey out to community events as much as possible.  “Police don’t solve crime on their own,” he said.

Tim Smatlan is a young father who lives around the corner from Woodland Park.  He brought his daughter Violet to the event after hearing about it from a neighbour.  Asked about her favourite part of the day, four and a half year old Violet proudly showed off a blue butterfly drawn like a mask over her eyes.  “Face painting!” she said between bites of hot dog smothered in ketchup.

The event seemed successful, with a few hundred people taking part in the day’s various activities.  But just three blocks away, fresh-looking graffiti painted a different picture of East Vancouver.  “Dead copz,” read a tag in vibrant green lettering on a mural near Britannia high school.  Despite events like Cops, Kids and Woodland Park, tensions between some members of the community and police still exist in this area.