This year’s Surrey Children’s Festival will take place May 22nd to May 24th at Bear Creek Park and the Surrey Arts Centre and it’s the only arts-based international children’s festival south of the Fraser River, providing an opportunity for children to become the creative thinkers of tomorrow.
Surrey Children’s Festival Highlights
Eric Litwin, author of the first four Pete the Cat books from Atlanta, Georgia (USA)
Interactive Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo from Australia
World music and dance Language of Rhythm
Shiamak Bollywood Jazz Dance Team all ages workshop
Moving theatre performance Jake’s Gift
The Nylon Zoo dress up and storytelling
Beautiful puppet show Little Old Man
The Marimba Station Learn to play the marimba in this fun and easy workshop
There are 5 performance venues, with 3 inside the Arts Centre (Main Stage Theatre, Studio Theatre and Lily Pad Stage) and 2 in Bear Creek Park (Leap Frog Stage and Community Spirit Stage).
Arts Activities (some free, some ticketed) include clay, face paint, mehndi, chalk, family tree, art cards, animation, and more. There will also be workshops and a procession each day. A full schedule of events is available online.
Surrey Children’s Festival Tickets
School group prices:
Please remember every person (student, teacher, and adult helpers) will need a ticket to see a performance.
Show ticket: $8.00. Includes Arts Activity Wristband
Arts Activity Wristband: $4.00. Valid all 3 days. Free for adults supervising children
Site Entrance: Free
Regular ticket prices:
Regular Ticket: $10.00. Includes Arts Activity Wristband.
Under 3 years: $6
Arts Activity Wristband: $5 Valid all 3 days. Free for adults supervising children.
Family Pack (4 tickets): $36.00
Saturday All Access Pass: $12* limited number available
Site Entrance: Free
Tickets are on sale now at Surrey Art’s Centre box office. The Arts Centre Box Office can be contacted at 604-501-5566.
Community Outreach
Envision Financial invites teachers and students to help raise awareness about childhood hunger by bringing a non-perishable food item to the Surrey International Children’s Festival. Envision Financial has committed the next ten years to raising $1 million for food banks in each of the communities where we live and work. Their community-based program, The Full Cupboard, was launched in March 2013 and since then has raised over $90,000 and collected more than 10,000 pounds of food.
Each month more than 30% of BC’s children access their local food bank. In Surrey, 42% of the 14,000 individuals served by the Surrey Food Bank are children. Drop off your donations at the Envision Financial marquee tent and fill our Full Cupboard shopping carts. Your school will be entered into our draw–five teachers will win a healthy and nutritious lunch for their whole class.
Miss604 is a proud sponsor of the Surrey Children’s Festival
Festival times are 9:00am to 2:30pm on Thursday, May 22nd and Friday, May 23rd; 10:30am to 7:30pm on Saturday, May 24th. The Surrey Arts Centre and Bear Creek Park are located at 13750 – 88 Avenue (King George Boulevard at 88 Avenue).
This post has been contributed by Ben Hill, Communications Volunteer with the Stanley Park Ecology Society (“SPES”). I have been following SPES since I moved into the West End almost eight years ago and I recently became a member. I wanted to offer the team an opportunity to share their news, events, and work so I have created “SPES Saturday” where they will be contributing stories with my audience once a month.
Celebrate our City’s Birds
Vancouver is for the birds! Not only is our city’s location a major stop along the international Pacific Flyway migratory route, but Vancouver also leads Canada when it comes to celebrating our feathered friends.
Today is the last day of Vancouver Bird Week, which saw exciting events, presentations, workshops, art exhibits at the Roundhouse and Hillcrest Community Centres, and walks all over the city to celebrate the fantastic variety of birds we have here.
Because of its unique mixture of coastal habitats and lush forests, our city is a haven for both weary migrants and birds that live in the region year-round.
Stanley Park Ecology Society (SPES) played a big part in this year’s celebrations, hosting four events during the week that were all FREE to the public — everything birdy, from eagles, to art and even taxidermy.
There is one free presentation left today at the Central Library — Saturday, May 10th at 7:00pm: Why Birds are Important with author, biologist, and birder, Dick Cannings. The announcement of Vancouver City Bird will also be made. Seating is limited so get there early.
Vancouver Craft Beer Week is heading into its 5th year and to celebrate the best in local brewing, they’re hosting 9 Signature Events, 12 Feature Events, and some weeklong specials.
VCBW allows you to get to some exciting venues, try new or familiar favourites, and enjoy all the facets of craft beer’s goodness right here in Vancouver. Here are just a few of the Signature Events on the VCBW schedule this year, from May 30th until June 7th.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
What: Cicerone vs Sommelier
Where: ARC Restaurant at the Fairmont Waterfront, 900 Canada Pl, Vancouver
Tickets: Available now for $115 (plus fees/taxes)
Thursday, June 5, 2014
What: Brothers in Hip-Hops
Where: The Butcher & Bullock, 911 West Pender Street, Vancouver
Tickets: Available now for $49 (plus fees/taxes)
In celebration of BC’s largest craft beer festival, the province’s finest breweries banded together to brew “PrevAle” the 2014 VCBW charity beer.
Last year the VCBW charity beer produced a cheque for $3,500 to Mark Brand’s A Better Life Foundation in support of the Save On Meats Meal Token Program. This year, the Music Heals Foundation, a charity close to the heart of VCBW 2014 host Prevail (Swollen Members), will benefit from the sale of this beer with a purpose, which will be released prior to the start of this year’s festival.
The beer, a double California Common-style ale, is a unique brew that Gary Lohin (Central City Brewers + Distillers) and Matt Phillips (Phillips Brewing Company) dreamt up while attending the inaugural Victoria Beer Week earlier this month. With these two brewmasters at the helm, expect a balanced full-bodied beer rich in flavour that is sure to be talked about for years to come.
For more information about these events and the lineup of feature events, follow Vancouver Craft Beer Week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. All events are 19+. Please enjoy responsibly.
Woman2Warrior, an obstacle adventure race in support of BC Easter Seals Camps, is happening on May 25th at Swangard Stadium in Burnaby.
About Woman2Warrior
Woman2Warrior is a non-timed run covering about 5km of trails, track, and grass around Burnaby Central Park and Swangard Stadium. The course features obstacles to test your strength, agility, balance, and sense of adventure. You may enter as an individual or as a team, but each person must raise a minimum $300 to participate. There will be awards and prizes for the top overall fundraisers and finishers. Recruit the support of friends, family and coworkers to help you reach your fundraising goal.
By participating in Woman2Warrior you’ll be helping to send over 900 kids and young adults with disabilities throughout BC for a week long camping experience at one of three Easter Seals accessible camps. Easter Seals Camps give BC children and young adults with disabilities the chance to discover their individual abilities. Camp sessions are carefully planned and designed to encourage these kids to gain new skills, develop new friendships, gain confidence and independence – skills that will help them to live lasting and fulfilling lives. Campers are encouraged to try new things, take risks in a safe and supportive environment, but most importantly have fun!
It is because of fundraising events like the Woman2Warrior and the Easter Seals 24 Hour Relay that the BC Lions Society is able to operate the camping program at a minimal cost to the families, many of whom are already financially burdened by the costs associated with raising children with special needs.
You can register for Woman2Warrior online today by selecting your preferred start time for the event on Sunday, May 25, 2014. 10:15am through 11:00am are sold out but 10:00am, 11:15am, 11:30am, 12:00pm, 12:15pm, and 12:30pm still have a few spots open.
Woman2Warrior Prize Pack
To raise registration and awareness around this worthy cause, I have been offered the following prize pack to give away to one lucky Miss604 reader:
$50 gift card to Subway
$25 gift card to Nesters Market
One box of Clif Bars
One 6-pack of Formula Four Water
One Woman2Warrior shirt from Firstar Apparel
One Luna Bars T-Shirt
One free registration to Woman2Warrior ($35 value)
Here’s how you can enter to win:
Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
RT to enter to win a @W2Wvan prize pack from @Miss604 http://ow.ly/wDhHY
Follow Woman2Warrior on Facebook and Twitter for more information. I’ll draw one winner at random from all entries at 5:00pm on Sunday, May 11, 2014.
Soon after I completed my online order of “Flint and Feather” the biography of E. Pauline Johnson by Charlotte Gray, I called Composer Tobin Stokes who mentioned that he had a copy of the book sitting by him as we chatted. Stokes was tasked with composing Margaret Atwood‘s libretto for PAULINE, a chamber opera about Canadian writer-actress Pauline Johnson that will have its world premiere with City Opera Vancouver this month.
Stokes submitted music for a piece of text for the opera and, after a juried selection process, he was commissioned to take on PAULINE. The first thing he did was buy every book sold by Chiefswood in Ontario (where Pauline was born) and have it all shipped to where he was working in the Netherlands at the time. “I just sat there reading, and learned. It was great.”
“The main thing is, for opera to be successful and for it to grow — which it currently is in leaps and bounds — it simply has to reflect society. Tell a good story, be entertaining, but be art.”
When it came time for Stokes to create the opera’s music, Atwood had already brought her work together with Pauline’s, transforming poems into arias and other writings into dialogue. He told me that when you read through the libretto, you’re not always sure whose words you’re reading but everything has been connected so well by Atwood. “The poems have been taken apart and edited, she’ll use a verse here and a line here, it’s great what she’s done.”
The layers created by an acclaimed author, a talented composer, and the life of Canada’s first coast-to-coast celebrity will come together with PAULINE. “That’s what opera is, it’s a collaboration of all these different art forms.”
Based in BC, Stokes has been a freelance composer for twenty years and has written for film, opera, television, theatre, dance, chamber ensembles, soloists, and large events. He feels that all of the different styles he’s been working on for so many years have all led him to opera.
“My theatrical experience, working with other people, and my film experience trying to help the music tell a story, and then the more hands-on vocal, orchestral and choir work, it just all has this trajectory that just leads to this one thing which is opera. I didn’t know it at the time, as I was pursuing all these different things.”
With opera companies working hard over the last few years to update their branding, bring in fresh faces, and appeal to the social media crowd (I’ve done Blogger Nights and Tweet Seats before), it’s exciting to watch the genre’s revival unfold right here in Vancouver. “I think opera, if it’s relevant and interesting, then more people will come,” added Stokes.
Pauline Johnson Opera
Already being a fan of Pauline Johnson’s writing, I cannot wait to see how Margaret Atwood wove a story with her words and how Tobin Stokes has put it all to music.
Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) traveled through North America and Great Britain giving readings of her own work during a time when such independence for women was rare and remarkable. The child of a Mohawk chief and a Quaker Englishwoman, Pauline was driven toward paradoxical goals of loyalty to both of her cultures and to her own ambition.
PAULINE is set at Vancouver in March 1913. Pauline is dying of breast cancer, and views her life through the fog of morphine. Torn by dual identity as both Mohawk and white, she confronts her past as her doctor tries to control her pain and her sister tries to control the story that will be told.
The opera will star Rose-Ellen Nichols as Pauline Johnson, Sarah Vardy as Eva Johnson and Adam Fisher as the tenor. PAULINE also features John Minágro, Edward Moran, Diane Speirs, Eleonora Higginson, and Cathleen Gingrich.
Tickets are on sale today for this highly-anticipated production that is sure to sell out. Opening Night Gala tickets are $100, which includes a $60 ticket to PAULINE and an invitation to a reception with special guests Ms. Atwood and Mr. Stokes, and the stars of PAULINE. Performance-only tickets are $60, $40, and $22 for those holding student IDs. Tickets are only available through The Cultch online, by phone (604) 251-1363, or in person at the box office located at 1895 Venables at Victoria Drive.
The opera will take place at the York Theatre, 639 Commercial Drive at East Georgia) on Friday, May 23rd at 8:00pm (world premiere); Sunday, May 25th at 2:00pm; Tuesday May 27th at 8:00pm; Thursday May 29th at 8:00pm; and Saturday May 31st at 8:00pm. The first performance at the York Theatre on May 23, 2014 will be celebrated with a gala attended by Margaret Atwood and Tobin Stokes.
Follow City Opera Vancouver on Facebook and Twitter for more information.
This post has been contributed by Ben Hill, Communications Volunteer with the 
Today is the last day of 
In celebration of BC’s largest craft beer festival, the province’s finest breweries banded together to brew “PrevAle” the 
$50 gift card to Subway