The ThunderBlogs

Nestled amongst the urban sprawl, Victory Square served as a natural place to pause for Downtown Eastside residents at the corner of West Pender and Cambie Street. Aged historic buildings surrounded the compact green space on all sides. The scent of impending rain saturated the air. Residents and students went about their respective activities within the confines of the park.

Several elderly residents occupied the four benches along the Cambie Street side of the park. A middle-aged man wandered by the benches, scouring the area for cigarettes.  He picked up and examined various discarded cigarette boxes in an attempt to find an unused smoke. Walking past the elderly men, he made his way to the corner of Cambie Street and West Pender Street, turned around and returned to lay down in the circular sitting area just beyond the benches. The pungent smell of marijuana trailed the man as he made his way back to his resting place.

On the opposite side of the park adjacent to Hamilton Street, four college-aged twenty-somethings kicked around a hackey sack while three of their cohorts sat on the grass and chatted a few feet away. Two more joined in on their game after a few moments of watching.

At the north corner of the park towered a three-sided granite obelisk. The structure was inscribed with a tribute to the fallen soldiers of the past, saying, “Their name liveth for evermore,” “is it nothing to you” and “All ye that pass by.”

Another group of four young people met near the massive structure. Two young men wielded equipment and were filming another young man and a young woman seated on the steps surrounding the obelisk. The rain finally came and the group dispersed to protect their camera gear from the elements.

Suddenly the granite structure was dotted then soaked by the fallen raindrops. The remaining park goers then filtered out of the area.

Student made lunches are typically more synonymous with grilled cheese sandwiches and ramen noodles than the orange and yellow pepper soup, steak with vegetables, and pistachio cake offered by the students working Bistro 101 at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. Although PICA instructors supervised the kitchen, students prepared, cooked, and served the meals.

While the restaurant exposed students to the practical realities of the restaurant business,  Granville Island visitors sampled their efforts for at a discount price.

Gonzalo, a dark bearded Spaniard dressed in black and white checkered pants, a neatly tucked white cooking smock and pressed blue PICA apron, carefully wrote down the orders.

“It’s a lot of money, but it’s real world, very practical and we get to do everything,” Gonzalo said about his school.

He stooped to place the soup bowl on the table and recounted how he moved from Barcelona at the behest of a girl and took up cooking as a career path in Vancouver.

“It didn’t work out, but I’m happy here,” he said while nodding towards the view of False Creek and the Burrard Street Bridge ahead of him.

“This is my first day,” he said before returning with the tablespoon he had forgotten.

When pushed into the liquid, at Gonzalo’s suggestion, the flecks of chorizo sausage ringing the bowl enlivened the viscous creaminess of the orange and yellow mixture.

He grinned at the idea of opening his own restaurant on the famous Las Ramblas strip in his hometown as he served the main course. Apart from the grill marked steak, a fist-high stack of grilled vegetables and flowered row of purple mashed potatoes lined the plate’s surface. The béarnaise sauce softened the steak and dulled the bite from the fresh ground pepper covering the plate.

Desert was a miniature green pistachio cake topped by strawberry sorbet and candied pistachio that dissolved as the sorbet dripped through the cake’s crumbled surface. The combination soon collapsed into a soupy pile best scooped up with a spoon.

Coffee and the bill followed in short order.

“Thank you and come back soon,” said the white-haired maitre d’/instructor as he returned coats and hats.

Tucked away on a street called Comox parallel to the Davie Village is a small hidden gem of the West End. There operates a quaint Saturday farmers market that unless one lives nearby or happens to saunter across, is difficult to find.

But fear not –the Vancouver Farmer’s Market is a non-profit organization that operates four farmers markets in Vancouver as well as a weekly winter market. The West End farmer’s market in particular draws a dedicated and eager weekly crowd every Saturday afternoon, rain or shine.

Anne Duffy, a friendly elderly woman offering delicious jam samples to everyone walking nearby and chatting easily with her customers. Duffy and her husband have been making jam for 14 years and despite her retirement she tries to sell her jam at two markets a week.

As Anne Duffy’s pleasant interaction with her customers expresses, the experience of a farmers market expands far beyond the shopping experience. Within the crowd, shoppers stop to chat with other neighbors and vendors are busy packing plastic bags full of fruits and vegetables.

Customers stop at each stand to sample the wide array of locally produced products including a woman who offers a bread sample to her child who smiles in delight.

The benefits of the market, however, also reflect on a broader scale.

“We give farmers the opportunity to sell directly to consumers and to maintain a semi-healthy lifestyle. We actually keep 35000 acres of farmland running a year,” said Public Engagement Manager, Shaye Hoobanoff.

“We are also a certified climate smart business. We work with recycling companies and try to be rid of unnecessary waste and packaging,” she added.

So, support for local business farmers, promotion of sustainability issues and community interaction. Sounds idyllic, yes, but over the past several weeks the farmers markets have become the center of heated tensions, which were only recently made easier.

“There are a lot of challenges: finding a place to operate, permits, signage laws,” said Hoobanoff, “we had to pay employers to put up signs indicating where the market was every week.”

A lack of signs did indeed make the market difficult to find.

After a public debate on July 20, 2010, the councils finally approved changes that reduce fees and allow markets to operate on private land, making Shaye’s job and the future of the market more optimistic.

As said by Executive Director Tara MacDonald, “as non-profit organizers of authentic, producer-only farmers markets for over 15 years, we’re thrilled to finally be on the road to legitimacy and long-term security”

Scattered pockets of loyal BC Lions tailgaters gathered Saturday outside Empire Field as they prepared to support their team in its match against the Hamilton Tiger Cats.

The air, sweeter than ketchup, was thick with the smell of pig fat dripping onto hot coals, and small plumes of smoke from portable barbeques floated up into an unexpectedly perfect blue sky.

It was 5:30 p.m., less than two hours from game time, and in accordance with BC Lions rules and regulations that stipulate tailgating can only begin three hours before a match, the party should have been at its peak. But it was all so… pedestrian. Where was the beer-soaked, raucous bash? Whither the muscled men with stomachs painted orange and black, the women sporting faux-lion fur bikinis? What of the flatbed trucks stacked with speakers and dance stages?

In fact, the tailgaters were a reserved, relatively disjointed community. Large reclining lawn chairs were arranged in semi-circles around food that was consumed with proper cutlery and napkins. Conversation was relaxed in true Canadian fashion. The only real action to be found was up in the air, as children spiralled footballs above rows of empty vehicles.

So what was the attraction? Would anything have been lost if an early season decision to ban tailgating from Empire Stadium had not been overturned?

“It was like they were taking the fun out of the CFL,” said Clay Palmantier, who drove from Williams Lake to take part in the tailgating and promptly made friends with Andrew Rogers and his family.

“It’s an event. You get together, you have some fun, then you head into the game,” said Rogers. “If you only do the game, you’re missing the whole experience.”

The food might have been a motivator.

“I think the first week we had sandwiches and it’s grown to steak and lobster,” said Mike Edwards, who started tailgating this season.

But it was not until five hours later, when 21,000 dispirited hometown fans stood to leave the stadium following a disastrous fourth quarter and ultimate loss that tailgating truly began to make sense. Present among the crowd were a few hundred tailgaters like Edwards, who left knowing that at the very least he had enjoyed a barbeque with friends, or like Palmantier, who had made a few new ones.

Despite a morning rain-shower and a few lingering storm clouds, hundreds attended the Sharing Our Wealth Festival at Douglas Park, Sunday afternoon.

The annual event features local merchants and community members who want to show what they have to offer, according to Ken McFaul, Vice President of the Douglas Park Community Association.

“How it started was, I guess 20 years ago we had a multicultural grant to bring multiple cultures together. Out of that gathering we were to come up with some idea and this is what we came up with, the Sharing Our Wealth Festival, to gather the community together to show what is available in the community and what the community has to offer,” said McFaul.

Scattered amongst the trees that surround the Douglas Park Community Centre were the telltale signs of a festival.

Four brightly coloured “bouncy castles” wobbled under the weight of their jubilant occupants.  Two portable generators powered electric fans to hold the inflatable structures upright.  The excited giggles of young children pierced the muffled rumbling of the generators.

Children of all ages, their parents in tow, dotted the 13-acre park.  A crowd of youth gathered around a baseball diamond backstop.  It was a queue for the most popular attraction, the Sky Ride.  Planted at the center of the diamond was a Vancouver Park Board bucket-truck, used for pruning trees.  Arboriculture Staff from the Park Board manned the extendable bucket, maneuvering it skyward, giving patrons a view of the community from above the trees.

Meanwhile, the unmistakable aroma of buttered popcorn filled the air near the Community Centre’s entrance, a free treat provided by Choices Markets on Cambie Street.

“Everything here is local, all the sponsors are local merchants,” said McFaul.  “Whoever wants to set up a community table is more than welcome to.”

“Mom! They’ve got pizza!” said one young boy, clad in a team uniform, cleats and shin pads from an earlier soccer match.  The Community Centre concession did indeed sell pizza, as well as smokies, samosas, veggies, and an assortment of baked goods.

Next to the concession was a display of wares up for silent auction.  A diversity of plants from the Vancouver Park Board Nursery made up the bulk of the items.  Gift baskets and certificates from neighbourhood merchants interspersed the plant species.

“All the money raised goes right back into the festival,” said McFaul.  “Most years we don’t make anything, we just break even.”

Vivian Campbell, a local Musqueam Weaver, has had a long standing relationship with the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, beginning when she was a teenager participating in the Native Youth Program and most recently as one of the featured artists at the museum’s first annual World Art Market.

WAM!, as the museum referred to the event, was conceived “in response to the growing demand for marketing opportunities for indigenous artists worldwide.” Vivian Campbell, a local Musqueam Weaver, was one such artist in attendance.

On Saturday, she and her loom were tucked back in the temperature controlled workspace of the Textile Research Room, offering demos and answering questions from visitors. Two samples of her work laid on the table in the center of the room. One of the wall hangings exhibited multiple styles and patterns of weaving in mostly neutral hues and the other, full of vibrant yellows and pinks, highlighted what Campbell referred to as her signature design style; symmetry.

“Every weaver has their own signature style,” Campbell said. She explained that a signature evolves along with skills over time.

Campbell’s lessons started back in 1997, when master weavers Debra and Robyn Sparrow began sharing with her the language of the loom. As featured in the 1986 book, Hands of our Ancestors: the revival of Salish weaving at Musqueam, the Sparrow sisters had embarked on a journey to renew the traditional art form. Campbell became a part of the movement and 13 years later, the language and the art of weaving passed down from her ancestors stills lives within her.

In a culture with modest amounts of written history, oral traditions and ancient art forms serve as windows to the past and bridges to the future. Campbell explained that her ancestors vicariously transfer information and messages thru weaving. “When I’m sitting at the loom,” she said, “those ancestors are right behind me.”

To learn more about upcoming events and exhibits go to the museum’s website at moa.ubc.ca/events/.

Situated between Canada Place and the Centerm Terminal at Centennial Pier sits Crab Park at Portside. This piece of beachfront with an interesting history provides locals with rare public waterfront access along the south shore of Burrard Inlet.

On Sunday afternoon Crab Park was visited by an array of locals looking to soak up the last of the summer sun. A young couple let their black Labrador off his leash. He raced across the dog park to a group of children happily playing. On the other side of the field an impromptu soccer game amongst a group of twenty-somethings kicked off. An elderly gentleman explored the shoreline. He settled on a location and set his line. Crab Park is a dubious fishing ground and after an hour the old man had nothing to show for his efforts.

Crab park offers a little bit of everything to anyone lucky enough to find it. It is fitting that luck would bring people here since the early inhabitants of Burrard Inlet knew the location originally as Luckylucky, the Native phrase for Grove of Beautiful Trees. In the early 1980s, a group called Create a Real Available Beach, or CRAB, led by Downtown Eastside activist Don Larson, lobbied for the creation of the idyllic waterfront park, which was finally opened in 1986. It wasn’t until 2004 that the name was officially changed to CRAB Park at Portside.

Not many people come to the park, those that do cross the bridge at the north end of Main Street. On Sunday afternoon as the sun set a mild age couple strolled across the bridge and stopped to read the plaque dedicated to the “On to Ottawa Trek.” On June 3, 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression, the location was the starting point of a worker movement that would eventually contribute to the downfall of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett’s Conservative Government.

The park retains a strong connection to the community. A large boulder rests along the edge of the path beside the beach. It is a memorial to the women murdered in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It was dedicated on July 29, 1997. Fresh flowers and handwritten notes are still left around the base of the memorial. The inscription makes special mention of the “native aboriginal women,” who were the primary demographic of the murdered women. The memorial is a sobering landmark and a reminder that not far from the park is Canada’s most socially troubled postal code.

Crab Park users are worried their secret oasis will not last much longer. The rapid gentrification of Gastown, and the potential development of the adjacent land to the west of the park has led to plans for a pedestrian greenway, including an overpass above the CPR rail yards to connect the north end of Carrall Street with the sea wall and Crab Park. The once peaceful park will not be so quiet once the rest of Vancouver finds out about it.

It was a sad day in North Vancouver when the Versatile Pacific Shipyards shut down. The shipyard opened by the Wallace family in 1906 built 379 vessels before being closed in 1992. During its peak the shipyard was the largest in BC and a vital part of the local community. Workers applied their trade building tugs and barges for the lumber industry, supply ships for both World Wars, ferries for BC’s coastal waters, and icebreakers for Canada’s Arctic. Renamed first in 1921 the Wallace Shipyard became the Burrard Dry Dock Company; then in 1985 became the Versatile Pacific Shipyards. The old shipyard has now been transformed into the Shipyard Historic Precinct. It sits half developed, a prime piece of waterfront real estate awaiting urban gentrification. The development of the area was stalled when the provincial government pulled funding from a proposed National Maritime Centre. Now local residents are unsure what their community will look like in the next five years.

Currently the Shipyard Historic Precinct contains the Pinnacle Hotel, Atrium Condos (with three more condo buildings planned), Shipbuilder Square, and 71,000 sq. ft. of waiting space. At the north end, propped up on a huge cement stand, sits the 80 ft. tall stern of the HMS Flamborough Head. Covered in white tarps it waits to be integrated into the new development. The stern section was to be used as the entrance to the National Maritime Centre before plans for the Centre were cancelled.

Surrounding Shipbuilder Square sit many of the old shipyard buildings, which are beautifully refurbished but remain empty. An old crane looms above. Moved and freshly painted in its original yellow, it stands in contrast to its rusting contemporaries still in use next-door at the Vancouver Drydock. The businesses that will move into the space remain a mystery and local residents like, Arlene Simpson, are getting frustrated that plans to complete the area’s development have stalled.

Simpson, who lives across the street from the stern of the HMS Flamborough Head, moved to lower Lonsdale with her husband five years ago. She has witnessed first hand the development of the old shipyard and now enjoys taking walks along the seawall and pier to snap pictures of the changing area and the passing cruise ships in the inner harbour. She was excited about the development of the Shipyard Historic Precinct including the National Maritime Centre. The provincial government’s decision to cancel promised financial contributions frustrates Arlene, as does the municipal government’s inability to approve a suitable alternative. “We were told that we would have this great place in the community and that all these buildings would be used for a market like Granville Island,” she said.

Local residents are growing impatient with the lack of progress. Many of them sit around the beautiful refurbished seawall and stare into the empty buildings. A new digital clock beside one of the buildings remains the only indication that any progress is being made.

Upon entering 119 Pender St., the marble floors glisten beneath the light of the circular chandelier overhead.  The tungsten light cast a soft yellow glow to the polished lobby and complemented a set of gold elevators.  Opposite the gleaming elevator doors towered an ornate marble staircase paired with carved wooden banisters.

Ascending to the first floor, the light transitions to a harsh fluorescent hue. The naked, bleached drywall and the scent of fresh paint told of ongoing renovations. Suite 103 sat at the end of a split hallway.  The door of suite 103 opened to the raucous office of the Pivot Legal Society, a legal advocacy group that works for the interests of Downtown Eastside residents.

Four cluttered desks were arranged in two columns, the only order to an otherwise disorderly workspace. A smaller office was situated adjacent to the desks, adorned by large paned windows and a slightly ajar door that exhibited bright red walls within.

The small office revealed itself to be more of miniature conference room, with a circular table, four chairs and a coffee maker. The occupant of this office was Paul Ryan, a slender man with pale skin and blond hair. He is director of Hope in Shadows, a project that encourages Downtown Eastside residents to submit photos of DTES and its residents as part of a contest to win place in its annual calendar.

Mr. Ryan said the project came about because non-residents would frequent the neighborhood and take photos of residents without consent and sell them for profit.  The project is designed to empower Downtown Eastside residents with a way to disseminate more accurate visuals of their neighbors and their neighborhoods.

Downtown Eastside residents are provided with a camera and consent forms they must return once all their photos are taken and other residents are hired to sell the completed calendars. Once the calendars are sold, the residents are allowed to keep the profit as part of the project. The remaining costs are divvied up on taxes, framing and street vendor licensing. The project is subsidized by Pivot Legal Society.

“The project helps people with confidence in going to get a new job.” Mr. Ryan said, “The better their self esteem is the more confident they are at trying to get a new job. And more awareness equals more interest.”

The Summer Night Market in Richmond was a celebration of love and cheap foreign goods. Five dollars were enough to buy a pair of Korean socks, a “don’t eat eraser”, and a curry fish ball with dried pig skin and radish. Despite the low prices, there were more people holding hands than there were people holding shopping bags.

The couples drifted among blue tents without any sense of urgency. Their eyes grazed the heaps of merchandise that lay on the tables in a search for useful trinkets. Along the way, they distractedly bumped into other market visitors, rarely apologizing or glancing back.

Tents that sold cellphone accessories, stationary and leggins monopolized every alley in the market, but the vendors who sold different products generally received more attention.

A head in an orb that was on display at a costume shop had a magnetic pull for shoppers. People shoved each other to get a closer look at the head and anxiously reached out to stroke the glass surface. Their enthusiasm dampened slightly when they learned that the head was not for sale.

This announcement came from the tent’s vendor – a black man in a striped fedora, tropical shirt, giant sunglasses and gold chain. The vendor was twirling in his tent and singing to the radio.

In the next tent, Zhixin Situ sat idly behind a line of cupping equipment that emitted a sinister, yellow glow. The overhead sign, Human Pain and Insomnia, failed to draw in customers and Situ’s three portable massage chairs stood empty throughout Friday night.

“It’s very disappointing,” said a senior man who was sitting on a pedestal by Victoria’s Psychic Shop. “So far it just looks like junk.”

The man drove from Coquitlam with his wife and was visiting the market for the first time.

A young woman who was searching for cellphone accessories disagreed.

“Everything here is so cheap!” she said excitedly. She spent $10 on her purchases at the market and said that the same products would cost her $50 elsewhere.

The biggest crowds clustered around the food tents. Colourful menus and the aroma of deep fried meat bombarded the newcomers: yam fries, marinated duck gizzards and an image of Osama bin Laden on a donkey selling barbecued lamb skewers.

The couples held hands even as they sampled the different foods. The celebration of love and cheap goods continued in unison.