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Six worshipers followed a nun’s lead in a slow procession, their palms pressed together in front of them. Their chanting echoed off the temple walls. A thin line of smoke rose from an incense pot in the centre of the hall while gold Buddha statues, surrounded by flowers, glistened in the sun.

The middle statue extended a hand to the worshipers – a Hindu, a white man in Buddhist robes and a woman of mixed faith.

The diversity of worshipers who gathered at the Lingyen Mountain Temple on Saturday afternoon is a common sight. The temple, which stands along the Highway to Heaven, shares a fence with two Christian churches, faces another church across the street and is within walking distance of a synagogue, mosque, and Sikh, Hindi and Tibetan temples.

Many Sikhs and Hindus come to the Lingyen temple, according to volunteer Gary Wu. Devon, a devout Hindu, first came to the temple during Chinese New Year celebrations. He enjoyed the atmosphere and started to attend Buddhist workshops in addition to practicing Hinduism.

“I’ve never felt pressure to change my faith here,” he said. “It’s the most loving place I’ve been to.”

Scott McMyn’s burgundy robe and shaved head gave him an aura of authority in the chanting procession. McMyn works at a mental health institute and comes to the temple to regain his strength.

“I repair the damaged organ – my brain,” he said after describing his struggle with one patient.

McMyn was the first Caucasian to complete an advanced, 3-day Buddhist ceremony at a Vancouver temple, which involved chanting for 12 hours each day.

Donna Hemingson moved to the temple’s neighbourhood over a year ago. She received a Dharma name in a Buddhist initiation ceremony, but is also open to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.

The Lingyen temple offers youth education programs, mediation workshops and free vegetarian meals. Since the temple currently operates at full capacity, its administration plans to expand by building a larger temple on adjacent land.

An open house was held on Sept. 15 to give community members a chance to comment on the expansion designs.

The pace in the temple slowed after the evening meal as the monks prepared for their chants and worshipers headed for the parking lot. Across the road, the Christian church invited a new round of visitors to the Highway of Heaven with its billboard announcement of the upcoming Sunday service.

The drag-queen-hosted charity event Bingo for Life, held weekly to support people with terminal illnesses, broke its fundraising record this past month by surpassing $5000.

Amid a dance party atmosphere of spinning lights and Top 40s music, over 120 people packed the Celebrities Night Club dance floor Wednesday to sit at table tops strewn with bingo cards, ink daubers and $3 drinks. Their donations raised $1250 toward food services at the Vancouver Friends for Life Society, an organization which provides support to people living with AIDS and other terminal illnesses.

Despite the serious cause, “Joan-E”, the heavy-set and fouled-mouthed drag queen who has been hosting the event since its inception in 1997, had the room laughing and cheering all night. Her sidekick “Summer Clearance” played along.

The drag queen duo sat at a table on a raised platform to the side of the dance floor. Joan-E was donned in a spaghetti strap dress, sparkling silver heels and a large hairpiece of dark curls. She pressed a wireless microphone against her lipstick-caked mouth. Summer would pass her a ball. Joan-E would tell a joke.

It all played out much like a Rocky Horror party. Each time Joan-E called “O-69!” strobe lights flashed and the group cheered. After “B-4!”, came a synchronous: “B-4 What!?”

The bingo players – that is, partiers – spanned nearly all ages, races, gender identities and orientations.

Near the DJ booth sat a bachelorette party of nine young women in devil’s horns. The 21-year-old soon-to-be-bride had never attended Gay Bingo before. Her friends found the event online.

Another party table was celebrating a 55th birthday. This was the third year the lesbian bartender had held her birthday party at Gay Bingo.

Men too were mixed in with partners and friends across the dance floor and bar tops. Those who sat on bar stools swung their feet to the soundtrack of kitschy theme songs. Others changed seats between rounds to chat with someone new.

Muscular male servers balanced trays of cheap drinks and swung their hips while squeezing between tables.

Plasma screens flashed “Bingo for Life!” and “We Have a Winner!”

Organizers said the funds raised by Bingo for Life are increasingly important for the gay community.

“People living with life threatening illnesses are off the government’s ‘ra-ra list’,” said Terry Halliday, a long-time Friends for Life volunteer. “So we need [the society] to support the community.”

Michael Bowring wore a plain shirt, slacks and a straw hat as he sat on a bench in front of Britannia Community Centre.  His hat shaded his eyes from the bright Saturday afternoon sun as he rolled a cigarette and put it between his lips for a puff.

“We don’t live in a democracy,” the 60 year-old man said.  “The Olympic committee is a private corporation, and governments and corporations are intertwined like the State and the Church.”

Talk to a Vancouverite about the Olympics and you are sure to get a reaction.  Talk to someone about the Olympics who lives on Commercial Drive and you are sure to get an opinion.  And asking whether the $320,000 the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games pumped into the Britannia ice rink was a good thing or not definitely elicits an opinion.

The Britannia ice rink is one of the dozens of buildings that make up the well-used, well-respected Britannia Community Centre complex.  The rink resides on the northern end of Commercial Drive in Mount Pleasant, an area, according to Statistic Canada, where over one of three households are low-income.

Inside the rink, dozens of children of all ages prepared to hit the ice, their legs stretched out as they tugged on the laces of their rented skates.  Above, photos of the professional ice hockey teams that came to practice here during the Olympics proudly hung, taped against pillars in front of the canteen.  The photos showed national heroes like Jerome Iginla, Henrik Sedin, and players from other teams, resting on their sticks, shooting, laughing – all in this very rink.

“I might be biased but the kids got new equipment, got to watch teams like Sweden and Canada, and we got new boards, new glass and new lights and money for new programs,” said James Smith, 21, community centre staff, hockey coach and lifetime resident of the area.

Just as a referee’s whistle signals for the game to start, Shania Twain suddenly boomed from the speakers above and echoed throughout the frosty rink.  Dozens of skaters moved onto the ice – 37 people to be exact.  27 others, remained on the benches.  Although not the “200 a day” the rink often gets, considering the nice weather today, Smith said the turn out was pretty good.

Meanwhile, back outside, Bowring continued to sit on his bench.  “With the Olympics we got a new ice rink, but is that what we needed?  Or does it make more sense to address the issue of children living in poverty in the area?”

When Hisham Soliman chanted the words ‘Allah-u Akbar’ last Friday, over a 100 people fell to their knees and bowed down towards the direction of Mecca.

The group consisted mostly of men, around ten women and one young toddler who stared inquisitively at the people as their foreheads touched the floor.The young boy watched, fidgeted and then copied the movements he saw around him as he kneeled by his father’s side.

The worshipers were gathered in the Lower Lounge of the International House in UBC to observe the Muslim Friday prayer. The weekly prayers have been taking place for over five years and are organized by the Muslim Student Association in UBC.

Starting at around 1 p.m. people started rushing down the stairs which lead from the main floor to the lounge.
They shook the rain off of their coats and umbrellas and those with backpacks flung them on the tables in the hallway between the washrooms and the lounge. When they saw fellow Muslims they greeted them with the Islamic greeting “as-salam alaykoum”- meaning peace be upon you.

Most then hurried to the washroom to perform the ritual ablutions required before prayer. They then took off their shoes and stepped onto the carpets which had been placed earlier on the lounge’s floor by the first people to arrive.
Sneakers, leather shoes, rain-boots and hundreds of other shoes lay scattered in the hallway as more people hurried in.

At 1:15 p.m. Soliman, a PhD candidate in Pharmacology, addressed the crowd in a khutba– the sermon that precedes the prayer. Every time he said the name of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, the crowd broke into a collective whisper and said peace be upon him.

As the prayers started, a couple entered the main floor of the building while pushing a stroller. An International Peer Advisor volunteered to watch their baby so that they could pray. The mother, her hair covered in a purple veil, waved at the her little girl and then quickened her step to the washroom.

When the prayer ended, the group squeezed themselves into the narrow hallway and bumped into each other as they put on their shoes. Outside the building people greeted each other each other in a multitude of languages.

“How is the family?” a bearded man asked another in Arabic. Two young students wearing backpacks discussed the weather and complained about their assignment load. A group of students chattered away in Bengali.
“I have to rush to class now, see you next week,” said another student as he waved back to the crowd.

Usually when West End residents see men and women on Davie Street wearing the community policing centre’s signature yellow shirts, they can assume a group of volunteer officers are on patrol. But Saturday those same volunteers donned their yellow shirts to raise awareness of the West End Coal Harbour Community Policing Centre’s services in an open house event.

“There’s a lack of knowing what we do,” said Constable Kelly Risebrough of the community’s perception of the centre. “That’s why these days are important.”

The open house promoted what some staff said are the lesser-known services at the centre, such as crime prevention and access to community resources.

A display on the street featured the centre’s Speed Watch program. Bordered by pylons, a radar gun stood in the road facing oncoming traffic. A large speedometer flashed each driver’s speeds as they passed. A volunteer officer recorded these on a clipboard.

On the sidewalk stood a table of pamphlets, posters, and a bike engraving station. Cyclists could have their drivers licence number engraved into their bikes as a method of theft prevention or theft retrieval.

Inside the centre volunteers answered questions and toured visitors past the reception desk to offices, meeting rooms, bike-patrol storage and a lounge. Most visitors were young families that had only become aware of the event by the display out front.

Parents of young children were invited to have a Child Find I.D. Kit made that they could store at home in the case of an emergency.

Yi Hong Li, a 30-year-old BCIT forensics graduate and volunteer, gently dipped the little ones’ fingerprints in ink and rolled them onto personal booklets. Many children stood proudly against a measuring tool and exposed toothless smiles as their pictures were taken.

“Lovely idea, isn’t it?,” said Eileen Brimacombe, an 82-year-old office volunteer, of the positive interaction the children were having with the officers. “And now they won’t grow up saying ‘Oh no! There’s a police man!’”

Aleya Trott, the centre’s executive director, said she thinks the West End community may not have a complete understanding of what the centre can offer.

“I think the community knows we’re here,” said Trott, “and they know that they can come to us when they’re in trouble, but I don’t think they know all that we do.”

Sewer upgrade work has led to the closure of the road to 50^th Avenue from Main Street for over a week. The intersection is the site proposed some two years ago for the construction of an India Gate to pay a tribute to the first Indo-Canadian community that settled in Vancouver nearly a century ago, according to media reports.

Two years later, there is neither a gate nor any sign of its construction which was supposed to be completed before the 2010 Winter Olympics. There are construction materials and ‘sidewalk closed’ signs on the road, but they are not for the construction of the gate, but for the sewer upgrade.

Local merchants believe that construction of such a gate at the center of Punjabi Market (that extends from 48^th to 51^st avenues) would add to the attractions of the market.

In was in 2008, a year before the B.C. provincial elections that the issue of construction of the gate was reportedly raised by politicians including Premier Gordon Campbell.

Madan Dhingra of Mona Cloth Warehouse said he did not believe that the construction was anymore on the cards. “It seems, they (leaders) will talk about it again when elections come,” he said. He said he had found neither the neighbourhood association nor his fellow businessmen talking about it these days.

Dhingra believes that anything like the India Gate that would add to the value of the area would help the business in the Punjabi Market.

Naresh Shukla, another merchant in the area, said there was never a plan to build such a gate. “It was just put on the air by some political leaders to woo votes from certain section of the community,” he said. “It was just a political stunt.”

But he also believes that construction of such a gate would add to the attractions of the Punjabi Market.

Dr Nitya Sharma who lives a few blocks southwards said he had not heard about the plan for India gate. But Jyoti Nijjar who owns a business near the proposed site for India Gate had heard about the proposal. “But after the election, I have not heard a single word from any one about it,” she said. Nijjar and her husband Paramjit both agreed that the gate, if built, would help the business in the market by adding touristic value to the area.

But Sarabjit Chandan who is also a migrant from India and owns a store at Main Street had a different opinion. He said there was no point in building an India Gate here. Rather, he said, the community, business and political leaders should focus on the problems of high rents and parking space to give a boost to the business in the market.

Weavers are challenged by the popularity of low-priced items, said Barbara Heller, a tapestry weaver based on Granville Island.

“People don’t want to pay what things are worth,” said Heller, 63, who stood behind a wooden counter at Fibre Art Studio on the island late Friday morning.

“We’re so used to mass produced items from Third World countries you know you go to The Bay and you can find something for five dollars and to pay 50 or $100 for the scarf that’s hand-woven, it’s that we’ve lost touch with how things are made,” said Heller.

Heller, who wore jeans and a blue top and sweater, is one of five weavers who share the studio.

The studio is participating in Culture Days from Friday to Sunday. “Culture Days is a collaborative movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities,” according to the Granville Island website.

The weavers will demonstrate and talk about their work from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Heller said this isn’t a big change from what they usually do, but the studio is normally closed Sundays.

The studio resembled a 360-degree rainbow of mixed colours and textures. Yarn wound into balls filled baskets on the floor. A yellow and green scarf draped a mannequin neck on the counter.

A loom across from the counter revealed Heller’s work in progress‒ a large tapestry of a crumbling stone building.

Apart from the studio, Heller said she’s represented by Elliott Lewis Gallery.

Heller, who’s been weaving for around 35 years, said locals aren’t coming to the island as much since the Olympics, which she said she attributes to Olympic parking bans. She said she thinks people started shopping elsewhere.

She said a benefit of being located on Granville Island is that there are a lot of tourists who buy items such as yarn and scarves.

A man and woman from Ontario popped into the studio. The woman, with white hair, looked for yarn and pulled a green sock out of her purse with knitting needles still attached.

“In the ‘70s and even into the ‘80s there was a real love of the handmade. You know the hippy generation, whatever, there was a return to it,” said Heller.

She said people started to shift their focus to fitness.

“And now people are back,” said Heller.

“Young people are knitting and learning to weave and spin and maybe we’ll come back to the appreciation of the handmade.”

The sixth annual Hip Hop For Peace festival hit the Vancouver Art Gallery Saturday, featuring performances from local and global hip hop artists with an anti-war message.

Mobilization Against War and Occupation, a Vancouver activist group with a young, student-based following, hosted the event to rally opposition against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Politics and music collided during the show, as audience members switched between signing petitions and dancing to classic Run-DMC samples blasting out of stacked speakers.

“I’m just here for the music,” said Tommy Gao, an aspiring young rapper in oversized headphones and neon blue Adidas. When approached to donate to the activist group, Gao said, “Nah man, I’m just a poor rapper in this city.” But many of the artists made it clear that hip hop and activism are closely connected.

“Hip hop is a culture that has been successful at getting people off the streets, out of drugs and involved with a culture that goes beyond the local and allows you to participate in a movement around the world,” said El Tibo Este from headlining act Obsesión, speaking through a Spanish translator.

Obsesión hail from Cuba, a country strongly supported by the event organizers. The Cuban flag hung sideways behind the stage, and a massive spraypainted image of the “Cuban Five”, five Cuban illegal immigrants being held under suspicion of terrorism in the United States, was also prominent. “Cuba is a country that is always in revolution,” said Este. “We support removal of the blockade for the good of the people.”

The petition circulated called for the complete, immediate evacuation of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Graffiti art with the message “Out Now” in gold and green flanked the stage on either side.

Despite the serious goals of the event, the ambiance was fun and celebratory. While First Nations radio host Kelly White led the crowd in a chant of, “When I say ‘Hip’ you say ‘Hop’, when I say ‘No’, you say ‘War'”, kids in sweatsuits practiced their spins on a makeshift breakdancing surface in front of her.

“When you talk about a hip hop festival against war, it scares people off,” said Darja Milidragovic, a local activist who immigrated to Vancouver as a child during the Bosnia-Herzegovina War. “When you switch it and talk about a hip hop festival for peace, it has a positive connotation… ‘War’ doesn’t move the masses. It demands a lot of responsibility and sacrifice. Peace is something everyone can give the time of day to.”

Painter. Writer. Thinker. Gabryel Harrison is an artist in the truest sense of the word. After spending nearly 18 years seeking solitude and quiet alongside the banks of the Fraser River in Southlands, she is ready to share that silence with those that wish to listen.

The old wharf had been home to a Japanese fishing fleet. Harrison transformed the building into a studio and an overall creative space. Canvases were arranged on the East facing wall in preparation for her upcoming show and a wood burning stove glowed bright orange, pulsing warmth and energy throughout the studio on a soggy Friday afternoon.

“I didn’t really want to be found,” admitted Harrison.

She said she had always felt that this space would be shared by many, but she had not always known exactly how. Growing to understand the importance of meditation in her creative process as well her every day life, Harrison began to wonder if others shared this “hunger for quiet and silence.” She decided to find out.

“I made the choice to make myself more visible,” said Harrison. She created a website with samples of her writings, paintings and outlining a creative workshop of sorts that she called, The Intuitive Path.

Harrison describes the series on her website as “a process and a practice to bring us into deeper relation with our own essential nature…mind, heart and hands explore these interrelations with brush, pen, spade, camera or clay.”

She now sees her studio as a space that she can offer to others, a space where they can begin their own journey into their own creative self. “I provide a container for that conversation to happen in,” she explained.

That container has produced a new collection of art for Harrison, blending her poetry with her painting. Her most recent collection contains pieces in which verses of her writing have been translated into braille and affixed onto canvases. A combination of gold leaf and oil paints massage the tablets and bring the words to life. In 2008, Harrison donated a similar gold leaf, braille piece that fetched $26,000 at a UNICEF Canada fundraiser.

Describing her motivation to get involved with UNICEF, Harrison said, “It’s what I can give back for the gift of being here.”

Gabryel Harrison’s upcoming exhibit opens November 4, 2010, at Winsor Gallery, 3025 Granville St. See the artist’s website at gabryel.com/index.html for details on upcoming series and shows.

“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.