Fan Expo Vancouver returns to the Vancouver Convention Centre April 18th to April 20th bringing with it celebrity guests, your favourite writers, actors, and more. This comics, sci-fi, horror, anime, and gaming show – expected to draw 25,000 fans – is packed with industry professionals, sketch duels, cosplay, workshops, and plenty of opportunities to shop.
John de Lancie at Fan Expo Vancouver
Photo courtesy of Fan Expo
Attendees at Fan Expo Vancouver have many reasons to line up to meet John de Lancie, as the versatile actor and producer has been a part of some of the most memorable franchises in television. Best known as “Q” in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, de Lancie has also had roles in Stargate SG-1, Breaking Bad, The Mentalist, and even My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
When attending events like Fan Expo, de Lancie says he represents the fantasy of his roles but also the reality of actors just like him. “I am dealing a little bit in the fantasy world of what it is that we do but I also try to explain to people just what the reality is of what it is that we do.”
“While I don’t want to particularly tell the secrets of how the magician does their tricks, I give [the fans] enough of the ‘behind the scenes’ so that they have a better appreciation of what a real actor’s life is like — not just the ‘Tom Cruises’ of the acting world, but the character actors like myself or the people who have created families and lives, and made it through to my age doing essentially what we started wanting to do when we were 14 years old. So that’s pretty extraordinary right there.”
In 2012 de Lancie produced Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (formerly titled as BronyCon: The Documentary). The film centres on bronies, the adult fans of the 2010 animated television series, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic in which John de Lancie voices the character “Discord” — a mischievous chimera type-creature with powers, whose tomfoolery is reminiscent of de Lancie’s “Q”. He says he’s a obviously a big booster of the culture that has erupted around this incarnation of the My Little Pony franchise.
A Vancouver connection there is that Ashleigh Ball, from the band Hey Ocean! is the voice of “Rainbow Dash” in the same My Little Pony series. No stranger to our fair city, de Lancie has also visited often in the last few years to either do filming or visit his son who attends school in Vancouver.
Over the next few months he will be working with playwright Rajiv Joseph, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and he’ll also be heading to Tahiti to sail his boat 6,000 miles back to the US. Following those adventures he plans to work on a project that pertains to Syria, in particular the displacement of young people.
This weekend you can catch the fascinating John de Lancie at Fan Expo Vancouver as he will be available for autographs and photo ops, which you can purchase online in advance or in person.
Where: Vancouver Convention Centre West Hall B & C, 1055 Canada Place When: April 18 to 20, 2014
4:00pm to 9:00pm Friday, 10:00am to 7:00pm Saturday, 10:00am to 5:00pm Sunday Tickets: Premium Package $99, Deluxe Weekend Pass $69, Friday $20, Saturday $35. You can also book your photo ops with your favourite guests in advance online.
Fan Expo Vancouver 2014 Celebrity Guests
Karl Urban (Star Trek), Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead), Bruce Campbell (Army of Darkness), Stephen Amell (Arrow), Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Stephen Amell (Star of Arrow), Eliza Dushku (Angel; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Dollhouse), Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville), John de Lancie (“Q” from Star Trek: The Next Generation), Tom Felton (Harry Potter), Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings) and many more. Check the guest list online for the latest announcements and follow Fan Expo Vancouver on Facebook and Twitter for more information.
Last night, through partly clouded skies, a total lunar eclipse was visible in Vancouver. The HR MacMillan Space Centre hosted an event and photographers took to the streets to capture the event:
As the CBC reports this morning, “if you missed last night’s total lunar eclipse, here’s some good news – there will be another one in October. Fortunately, Monday night’s eclipse is the first in a tetrad — a series of four total lunar eclipses separated by roughly six months each. The next one takes place on October 8th, peaking at 3:54 am PT. You’ll only be able to see the whole eclipse if you live west of Regina and Saskatoon, as the moon will set before it is complete in the rest of Canada. However, the peak of the eclipse should be visible almost right across the country.
The last two eclipses of the tetrad will take place on April 4th and September 28th, 2015. Tetrads, groupings of four total lunar eclipses, are expected a total of eight times during the 21st century, NASA Science News reports. However, that makes this century unusual — there were no such tetrads between 1500 and 1900.”
During the month of April I will be featuring a Cherry Blossom Photo of the Day, sourced from the Miss604 Flickr Pool and/or the #Photos604 tag on Instagram. You can barely walk a full block in the city without encountering a photographer capturing this pink blooms — or stopping yourself — so it’s the perfect time to start this series. Enjoy!
The Museum of Anthropology (“MOA”) at UBC quickly became one of my favourite places in Metro Vancouver after school field trip visits when I was younger. The history and artwork, the in-depth look at Northwest Coast culture, and the various galleries make the MOA an enchanting place for a visitor of any age.
Without Masks Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art
Juan Carlos Alom (1964); Without words, 1996
Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art opens at the Museum of Anthropology on May 2nd. Originally launched in Johannesburg in 2010, this is the first time this collection has been seen in North America. The largest and most diverse exhibition of Afro Cuban art ever to be staged in the world, Without Masks includes artworks from 31 Cuban contemporary artists spanning from 1980 to 2009.
Two great themes are explored in this exhibition: the cultural and religious traditions of Africa in Cuba and related racial themes and issues from around the Atlantic. The vast media represented in this collection include painting on canvas and wood, watercolour, drawing, printing (xylography, silk-screen, collography), collage, patchwork, installation, soft-sculpture, photography, video-installation and video art, creating a powerful exhibition that comments and reflects upon the multiple imprints of Africa in Cuba’s culture.
I have two passes to give away for this exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology, valid until it closes in November of this year. Here’s how you can enter to win:
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RT to enter to win tickets to Without Masks at @MOA_UBC from @Miss604 http://ow.ly/vMJi0
I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Tuesday, April 22, 2014. Follow the Museum of Anthropology on Twitter and Facebook for more information about this exhibit and other happenings at the museum.
The MOA galleries and shop (at 6393 NW Marine Drive at UBC) are open daily from 10:00am to 5:00pm and until 9:00pm on Tuesdays.
It’s fairly easy to get out and about in Vancouver, becoming one with nature on seaside paths and forest trails. However it’s not often that you can get up close with wildlife–especially birds–and that’s where strategically located webcams come in handy. Here are just a few online spaces where you can view creatures and critters around BC without leaving your house.
Eric Pittman has been filming birds in his Esquimalt backyard for five years on his Hummingbird Cam.
Eagle Webcam
The CBC has a nice roundup of various Eagle Cams around BC including White Rock, Hornby Island, Delta, and Sidney. The Hancock Wildlife Foundation also hosts over a dozen bird cams.
Sea Otter Cam
Rehabilitated otters at the Vancouver Aquarium, who themselves became pretty “internet famous” with a video of two creatures holding hands or “rafting”, can be found on one of the aquarium’s many live cams.
SPCA Kitty and Racoon Webcam
The BC SPCA hosts two webcams, one is the Critter Cam hosted by Wild ARC — who cares for almost 2,500 injured and orphaned wild animals each year — and another is the live Kitty Cam hosted by BC SPCA South Okanagan/Similkameen Branch.
Earl and Pearl Pigeon Webcam
James Keller found a pigeon nest on his fire escape complete with two eggs so he began documenting the day-to-day of parents he named Earl and Pearl.
There used to be a selection of Heron webcams available as well (from New York and Victoria) but if you’re up for the quick walk into Stanley Park, you can visit the heronry near English Bay in person. Learn more in the Heron Report that the Stanley Park Ecology Society contributed to Miss604 in December.
The heron cam gives you the ultimate close up view of one of North America’s largest urban colonies of Pacific great blue herons. It is a window on the world of these magnificent birds from courtship through egg laying, until the grown chicks fledge in late summer.
