Author: Carrie Swiggum

From a block away you could see orange balloons bobbing over the heads of guests at the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival this past Saturday held at Slocan Park. Kids scurried around the playground with the balloons secured to their wrists while adults lounged next to the stage watching the rotating 20-minute performances.

There were kids on stilts with wigs and headpieces resembling jellyfish, tentacles streaming as they sauntered, waving rainbow coloured flags. Anthropomorphic vegetables were on display as part of the Harvest Fair, for example, tomatoes with faces drawn on in black marker. Next to the tomatoes was a flyer announcing a Harvest Fair competition, including categories for craziest carrot and ugliest gardening shoes.

The Moon Festival has been held annually since 2003, and is a melding of the traditional Chinese Moon Festival; the Harvest Fest, supported by the Renfrew Collingwood Food Security Institute; and the Still Moon Arts Society.

Carmen Rosen, artistic director and founder of the Still Moon Arts Society described the event as an “environmental festival without bashing people over the heads,” when talking about celebrating the natural beauty of the Renfrew Ravine.

And she acknowledged the Asian moon fest ties when speaking about the lantern making workshop and the large percentage of people with Chinese ancestry in the area, calling the event a “blend of different harvest traditions.”

The stage performances began with a First Nations drum circle, followed by music from Latin America and then a clown and puppet show. The “Renfrew Chinese Seniors Dance” and the “Renfrew Mandarin Choir” prompted the mainly elderly Chinese audience to erupt in spontaneous applause during those performances.

Chance Stewart, who described himself as the “Master of Ceremony” entertained the kids and kids at heart between performances dressed in a homemade hat made to look like a bird’s beak, completing the bird costume with tights and boots. “I’m getting tired of standing on one leg,”  he joked to the audience, which by the look of the blank faces in the crowd, seemed to confuse them more than amuse.

After three hours of stage acts, local politicians Don Davies, MP, and Adrian Dix, MLA, announced winners of the best tables at the Festival for categories like creativity and best overall. A few of the tables were represented by the Collingwood Neighbourhood House, the Renfrew Collingwood Multicultural Artist Network and Community Action for Seniors’ Independence.

To end the festivities at Slocan Park the crowd followed a marching band to the Renfrew Ravine where lanterns had been placed. Fireworks were expected and another successful year of the Moon Fest.

It was raining on Thursday at 8:15 p.m. when a man walked into the Happy Bloom Restaurant on Kingsway, shot one man in front of witnesses, and then left, according to reporters already at the scene.

An hour and a half after the shooting the Chinese restaurant was still cordoned off by crime scene investigators. There was an ambulance and a VPD squad car silently parked on the street. Two TV reporter vans were parked across the restaurant in the busy McDonalds parking lot.

Besides the police and the few reporters it was hard to tell anything significant had happened in the last few hours. Several 20-year-old Asian looking men waited under the bus stop shelter only three metres from police tape looking away in the direction of the bus. Vehicles continued to come and go from the McDonalds, and passersby navigated the blocked-off sidewalk and instead walked on Kingsway Street to continue down the block.

Police had not yet made a statement as to the motive or any details of the victim by 10:00 p.m. Three reporters stood between the bus shelter and the police tape, huddled under the building overhang to stay out of the rain. Kate Webb from The Province had been waiting to hear from police for over an hour, she said. Jon Woodward of CTV news was asking where his news van was, while holding a microphone, and water dripped off of the hood of his rain jacket.

A week before Const. Heather Brown, Community Collingwood Policing Centre, had said there was no gang crime in the area that she was aware of, and rarely any violent crime, when questioned about graffiti between the Nanaimo and 29^th Street SkyTrain stations.

The area of the shooting was just two blocks from the Collingwood policing ward. When approached at the policing centre the next night and asked about the shooting, volunteers there said they hadn’t heard of the news.  That section of the city was under the Cedar Cottage Policing Centre supervision.

Even though this is only the eighth murder of the year in Vancouver—reported by Kim Bolan, from The Vancouver Sun, who talked to Const. Lindsay Houghton at the scene—pedestrians in the area didn’t seem to be too concerned about their safety around the scene the night of the shooting.

The reporters were still standing under the overhang, joking with each other, waiting for a statement at 10:30 p.m. The rain wasn’t giving up. Crime scene investigators continued searching the restaurant and a gunman was off somewhere in the night.

Installing a solar powered sign emblazoned with the words “Welcome to Collingwood” was one of the new ventures proposed at the annual Collingwood Business Improvement Association (CBIA) this past Thursday.

Also discussed in the back room of the Samosa Garden on Kingsway were three main goals of the non-profit CBIA. The association allocated 61% of its budget towards: Crime Prevention; Street Enhancements; and Marketing & Promotions in the last year and committed to these goals in the years to come.

Seven large tables were formally set with dinnerware but only four were used, while a chandelier provided soft light on the power point presentation.  Samosas and garlic infused naan appetizers were passed around and business owners greeted each other informally like old friends, slapping backs and discussing their families.

Despite a noticeable lack of Chinese business owners in an area that is dominated by bubble tea houses, Chinese language advertising and Asian grocery stores, the meeting commenced to approve a seven-year budget and reflect on the current fiscal atmosphere in Collingwood.

According to BIA documents, 71% of businesses in the area are made up of less than 5 employees and 25% have 5-20 employees. The CBIA was formed five years ago, said Jehangri Kara, owner of the Collingwood General Store and a board member, and his business style is to “work more, talk less” he said.

He also expressed disappointment with other board members who were absent from the meeting—part of the meeting agenda was to elect new board members.

Other attendees included business owners from chains like Starbucks and London Drugs and smaller shops like Simply Curries, Inc. and Bikram’s Yoga Metrotown.

Constable, Heather Brown from the Collingwood Community Policing Centre and local politicians, Don Davies, MP, Adrian Dix, MLA and Peter Vaisbord, coordinator of the BIA program from the Vancouver regional planning office, came to provide support and say a few words.

“Don’t tell the other BIAs but you’re my favorite BIA,” Vaisbord said to the audience which garnered a few laughs.

Almost everyone won door prizes of chocolate or wine at the end of the meeting among those who hadn’t left early.

Dix took his opportunity to speak to voice concern over the closing of three Collingwood elementary schools, “You know the children, they’re your customers,” he said after asking business owners to place petitions against closing the schools in their stores.

We all need a little food comfort in our lives, especially if you’re unsure of where you’re next meal is going to come from, and that’s where the Renfrew/Collingwood Food Security Institute comes in.

Through their Community Kitchen located in the Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH), the Institute provides a place to learn about cooking healthy food—for free—and then distributes the food that is made to the community.  Volunteers engage to learn a new cooking technique in the hopes they’ll share their new skills with others, often using ingredients from the roof top garden or other local and sustainable growing practices.

Once a volunteer, Stephanie Lim, Program Coordinator, says the Community Kitchen has been around for four years and she has been leading cooking classes for two.  She said volunteers get to keep some of the food they make but most of it is donated back to the program. On Saturday mornings, for example, the Institute provides a nutritious meal to homeless people, along with a shower and more amenities provided by the CNH and Homelessness Committee.

In the kitchen, four volunteers stand around the large kitchen island chopping vegetables while Lim pours out mason jars of expired or burnt jam preserves from a year ago into the garbage.

“Botulism is silent in all its various forms,” she says. Jars are hard to find in the cluttered kitchen but necessary for the day’s workshop canning spaghetti sauce.  Aprons are hidden in a boiling pot on the counter along with the other pots, pans, plates, colanders and bowls.

Thirty pounds of tomatoes sit waiting to be scored, and then they will be blanched and peeled to make nine pints of sauce. After the tomatoes have boiled, Lim returns them to a commercial-size mixing bowl. Dousing them in cold water the tomatoes are returned to the table and all at once the volunteers grab steaming tomatoes to slip off the skins.

The volunteers represent a portion of the cultural make-up of the area. Recognizing that the Institute hopes to develop community food leadership teams and develop a sustainability food security plan based on local assets, according to their website.

But for now, everyone’s focused on learning a new skill, meeting new people, and helping out the community—one jar of sauce at a time.

Friday morning in September, traffic chugged on methodically at the intersection of Kingsway and Nanaimo, on the edge of Collingwood neighbourhood in East Vancouver.

On the southeast corner of the street, bright, fluorescent lettering stands out on billboards against the grey concrete and littered sidewalk advertising the sale of new condos that would be built on the same land: “ALL ONE BEDROOMS UNDER $299,000…PHASE 1 95% SOLD. THIS VIEW THAT PRICE.” The signs illustrate a bright twinkling downtown cityscape at night set in front of Vancouver’s iconic north shore mountains, turning an otherwise two-dimensional ad into a working man’s fantasy. There are no other high-rises in this part of the city–yet; but The Wall Group is looking to change that. Eventually a 22-storey building and a mid-rise will be built on the site the developer is dubbing Eldorado to reflect the history of the neighbourhood. According to the developer’s website, a 396 square foot studio would cost someone about $850 per month.

The Eldorado Motor Hotel, just south on Nanaimo, is visibly vacant from the street, patiently waiting to be demolished. Bare windows reveal hallowed out rooms.  And up above another high-flying billboard mingling with the low-lying clouds reads, “If You Lived Here You Would Be Home By Now! (LOL).” Change is in the air.

Sitting on a portion of cracked cement by the new realty office, Quoc Pham, doesn’t think he’ll notice a difference when the three buildings are gone and a new project begins. Wearing an Adidas sweatshirt and jeans, Pham cradles a tallboy Budweiser can in his tattoo covered hands that he bought at the Eldorado liquor store. “I’ll still be able to do this,” he grins while taking a drink.

Pham says he grew up in the Collingwood neighbourhood but finds himself at the corner mostly everyday.  He says he currently lives near the 29th Avenue SkyTrain but likes to sit and drink or wander around.

As the rest of Collingwood gets ready for a facelift proposed by the city set to begin in the next few years, calling the project Norquay Village, turning single family homes into a dense living space, this corner leads the transformation, and with it a landscape of abrupt change in this traditionally over-looked, multi-ethnic community.