canuck huggin for a cause

Nothing like waking up on a foggy Thursday morning and realizing that it’s Raise a Reader Day.

Since its national inception in 2002, the CanWest Raise-a-Reader campaign has raised more than $5 million for family literacy programs across Canada…

On Raise a Reader Days, people in lovely yellow shirts line the streets and for a donation of any size, you get a copy of today’s Vancouver Sun newspaper – but wait, there’s more.

Scattered across downtown, helping hand out papers and posing for pics you will find various members of the Vancouver Canucks.

Laura had already met me at my house and we were walking up Robson to get to work when John called: “Linden’s at Georgia and Granville!”. I got off the phone and told Laura we’d have to make a detour to which she replied something like “Ya, right, I can’t be late for work.” But of course when I told her WHY, she screamed, grabbed my arm and powered walked up the street talking a mile-a-minute, so excited.

We first came across Marc Chouinard, on Thurlow and Robson. He looked all lonely so we got a paper and I took a pic with him. Might I say, with his lil glasses and infectious laughter I was almost smitten and forgot our journey was not yet complete.

Still giddy, we turned off Robson at Granville and B-lined it to Georgia. Lo and behold, a little line up had started to form and there was Mr. Hockey Vancouver (of my generation anyway). We lined up, bought another paper (since we both wanted pics with him and that seemed to be the price) and met Trevor Linden. I took a couple pics of him signing Laura’s paper and posing, and she got one of him with me as well.

Of course the pics won’t be up until later tonight because immediately after the photo shoot Laura and I went our seperate ways to our respective offices. She called me on her way, once we split, to let me know the locations of more Canucks.

She’ll send the pics (from her cam) after work tonight, so I’ll post on my Flickr, reflect on the day, and grin.

EDIT: Pics are up on Flickr now (tag: raiseareader)