It’s going to be a good weekend to curl up indoors with some live streams and is there ever a great selection this Saturday and Sunday! We’ve got dozens of BC Culture Days events, the Vancouver International Film Festival (“VIFF”), the Canuck Place Gift of Time Gala, and the WORD Vancouver literary festival. Find these events and many more things to do in Vancouver this weekend are listed below:
Tonight the YWCA Women of Distinction Awards winners will be announced via a live online ceremony. Awards will be handed out (virtually) in fourteen categories, honouring amazing women in our community.
Previous Awards Night Gala Room
As social media sponsor, I am taking to Instagram to post live updates in my stories and I will also have some updates on Twitter, both using the tag #YWCAWODA. Check back here throughout the night for updates…
Women of Distinction Awards Winners
The evening begins with a chat with Dr Bonnie Henry, this year’s Icon Award recipient. Previous recipients are May Brown (2018) and Kim Campbell (2019).
“One of my dear friends and mentors won this award a number of years ago,” Dr Henry says in her acceptance speech, referencing Dr Sheela Basrur who won a Woman of Distinction Award in Toronto. “Having been through one of the most challenging times in the last few months, this is a tremendous honour. I want to remind you all to be kind, be calm, be safe.”
Surrey’s 2020 Civic Distinction Awards (formerly City Awards) are awards of excellence that acknowledge business and community leaders who have made a major contribution to the City of Surrey in their respective fields. Nominations are now being accepted until October 16, 2020.
Surrey’s Civic Distinction Awards
Nominate a Surrey resident, organization, group or business for an award of excellence and demonstrate your civic pride by recognizing outstanding projects that positively impact the City of Surrey.
Fort Langley National Historic Site will be offering their highly-anticipated Grave Tales event this year in a modified capacity. Join expert storytellers for a two-hour program of spine-chilling stories, as you walk through the Fort Langley village at night.
Grave Tales at Fort Langley
Tickets ($22) go on sale at 9:00am on Friday, September 25, 2020. This event sells out well in advance each year, be sure to book your tickets!
The program will run Thursdays to Sundays, October 8 to 30, 2020. Book for 7:00pm, 8:00pm or 9:00pm. There will be a maximum of ten people per tour. This event is for adults only, 18+.
Masks are mandatory for guests and physical distancing is to be maintained at all times. Grave Tales takes place outdoors so be sure to dress for the weather (and cemeteries).
Fort Langley National Historic site reopened in July with COVID safety protocols in place. Open daily from 10:00am to 5:0pm, you can climb the bastions and gallery, and peer through the entrances to several historic buildings. Parks Canada interpreters are on site at a few stations. Picnic areas and outdoor park areas are open.
Rising from the mist of the Fraser River, the palisades of Fort Langley stand tall. Inside the walls, rough-hewn timber buildings recreate the rugged 1800s. See where Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders mingled with California gold prospectors and hear First Nations interpreters tell century-old tales.
Vancouver artist David Wilson presents his newest collection, Close to Home — his first since 2019’s Everywhere From Here — October 1 to 21, 2020 at the Kurbatoff Gallery.
David Wilson Close to Home
Dreams of Distant Memories by David Wilson
Where: Kurbatoff Gallery (2435 Granville St, Vancouver) Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11:00am to 5:00pm; Sunday 12:00pm to 4:00pm
Close to Home offers a peek at those final, pre-COVID days in early 2020. In the poignantly titled “Come Back to Me”, Wilson’s vibrant acrylics capture the Stanley’s grand marquee as it presides over a rain-slicked South Granville Street, still busy with traffic and—typical to the artist’s often-waterlogged work—hunkered pedestrians clutching their umbrellas.
“It’s a world that, despite its many monstrosities, seems a little bit whimsical now,” says Wilson. “It’s a place that, in spite of all of its shortcomings, doesn’t seem so bad.”
“It’s less about being a literal visual documentation and more of a synthesizing of what I am feeling about the time while I was there. It’s a very strange alchemy of representation, memory, sound, smell, and feel as I work through those moments that eventually coalesce into something tangible and visibly recognizable.”
For perhaps the first time in modern history, our experience under COVID-19 is truly universal. With two immuno-compromised family members in his own home, Wilson had especially concrete concerns in those early months of the pandemic. He was used to “uncertainty,” but nothing on this scale.
“As the news raged about COVID’s ability to spread with impunity and overwhelm populations in great numbers, the thought of making art seemed so trivial, perhaps even a little bit self-indulgent. It was the first time in many years that I did not feel inspired to create. My thoughts were consumed by the crisis at hand and its implications for me, my family, my community, and the world at large. So, I stopped for a while and watched and listened. COVID created a concentrated time for introspection. Not just for me but for all of humanity.”
Mercifully, inspiration returned. As such, desire and reverie mingle in Close to Home. With an unknowable future, Wilson turned to the past, emerging from a familiar cycle of grief and despair to find solace in a trove of old photographs. “Feels Like Only Yesterday” takes us back to a thriving Granville strip at night. “A Path Through the Sea” pits the Burrard Street bridge against a twinkling Fairview at dusk, suggesting a city pregnant with energy. That same landmark is given a chilly, vivid rendering in “The Wind in Our Faces.” In all cases, Close to Home feels like an attempt to time-stamp the tone of pre-COVID life in Vancouver.
Feels Like Only Yesterday by David Wilson
In a roundabout way, David’s work reminds me of my time away from Vancouver. When I moved away to Massachusetts for work in 2002, I enjoyed my new city but I also craved anything that reminded me of home — hence the creation of my “Miss604” moniker. When I look at David’s work, I see my home. These are the pieces I would have wanted on the wall of my room in Cambridge. They make me homesick even while I stare out my office window on a grey and rainy West Coast morning.
