A Good Book Drive is running this month to help stock The Writers’ Exchange library in East Vancouver with kids books. The campaign was started by Cory Ashworth (from The Peak) and his friend Lizzy Karp (Co-Founder of Rain City Chronicles) who were inspired to help after hearing about The Writers’ Exchange program at a Rain City Chronicles event.
The Writers’ Exchange makes literacy exciting and accessible for inner-city kids through free mentoring and creative writing projects. The vision of the Writers’ Exchange is that every child will have the literacy skills necessary to access a world where anything is possible. Thanks to the generosity of our donors and supporters, all of the Writers’ Exchange programs are free for the children and families they serve. The Writers’ Exchange is a project of Tides Canada Initiatives, a nationally registered charity.
The only program of it’s kind in Vancouver, The Writers’ Exchange currently serves 250 children aged 5 to 18, with the support of 150 trained volunteer mentors, and will be opening a new facility in January of 2013 that will increase the number of inner-city children served to more than 500. The new, dedicated space will house after-school tutoring for all ages and subjects, an expanded writing-workshop schedule and family literacy programs. And books are the heart of all Writers’ Exchange programs.
Throughout the month of November you can stop by one of the following locations to donate a new kids book (for ages 5 to 18) in a Good Book Box:
Nelson the Seagull (315 Carrall Street); Collage Collage (621 Kingsway); Dilly Dally (1161 Commercial Drive); Union Wood Company (503 Railway Street); Walrus (3408 Cambie).
You will receive a bookplate for your book as well so that you can personalize your donation and share a bit about what the book means to you.
When I was young my brother, sister and I were lucky enough to have story-time every night with my parents. My dad was best at telling stories from memory and my mom was always more animated, putting on different voices for characters in the books we read. One of our favourite bedtime books was simply a collection of short stories and we would get to pick one, two, or three pieces to read each night depending on the length.
I combined the love I had for choosing my own adventure each night with a few of the first books I ever picked out on my own, by Roald Dahl (like Danny, Champion of the World, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and more). I’m donating The Roald Dahl Treasury which is a collection of excerpts from his books that will hopefully lead to more reading and exploration of his imaginative work.
Follow A Good Book Drive on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to find out more about the campaign.
Leading up to the holiday season I love profiling unique gift options for friends and loved ones – the intangible gifts and experiences that make a difference. WWF Canada has launched their Wildlife Adoption Kits for the season, symbolic gifts to share and support a wildlife cause in various regions around the globe.
When you symbolically adopt a species at risk, you’re giving an extraordinary gift while supporting WWF’s conservation efforts. Help make a difference around the world. Give the gift that keeps on giving. In addition to feeling good about your gift, you will also receive an applicable tax receipt.
Species up for “adoption” include everything from orangutans, meerkats, and blue sharks to the snowy owl, leopard frog, and grizzly bear. New species this year include the river otter, orca, gorilla, and Kermode bear.
Each kit is $40 and comes with a personalized adoption certificate, high-quality wildlife plush and collector card, a recycled gift bag, and details on the work this gift will help support the species. A $30 tax receipt is also issued with purchase.
To promote the WWF Wildlife Adoption Kits, I have a Kermode Bear kit to give away to one lucky reader.
The rare Kermode bear is a subspecies of the American black bear. One out of every ten has a unique cream-coloured coat. The white bears are also known as Spirit Bears. Habitat destruction is the biggest threat faced by the Kermode bear.
Kermode have been designated the official animal of British Columbia. Here’s how you can enter to win the Kermode Bear kit:
- Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
- Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Tuesday, November 13, 2012. Follow WWF Canada Twitter and Facebook for more information about their efforts around the world.
Update The winner is Anne!
Due to the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, the Canadian Red Cross is accepting donations on behalf of the American Red Cross to assist with recovery and relief efforts in affected areas.
One of dozens of boats tossed on the roadway in Rockaway. Photo credit:
American Red Cross.
A few weeks ago I met Red Cross workers in Toronto including Karen Snider, who spearheaded the Canadian Red Cross Social Media Team, of which I am a part. She just returned from Washington, DC where she was when Sandy hit and sent the following to us by email:
“I’ve been here in Washington D.C. at American Red Cross headquarters since last Saturday, and I can tell you the team here and on the ground across the affected areas have been working around the clock to help those communities most affected. My work has focused on supporting the Digital Team, using social media to reach out to those affected and listen for messages of people who are in need of support from our disaster teams. The Red Cross has tracked nearly 1 million mentions of the disaster in social media.”
Red Cross in the Staten Island neighborhood of Oaklawn. Photo credit: Catherine Barde.
American Red Cross.
Here are some stats that Karen provided:
- All funds raised through the Canadian Red Cross will support a massive Red Cross relief operation.
- The American Red Cross is in communities right now providing aid and comfort to thousands of people affected by Superstorm Sandy. Shelters are open in multiple states and a massive feeding operation is underway to get hot meals to residents in places like Long Island, Manhattan, Staten Island, New Jersey and West Virginia.
- Since last Saturday, the Red Cross has provided nearly 37,000 overnight shelter stays, served more than 215,000 meals and provided more than 5,000 health services and emotional support contacts to people affected by Sandy.
- The Red Cross has deployed more than 3,800 disaster workers and more than 240 response vehicles to the region to help those affected.
- Canadian Red Cross is deploying a team of shelter specialists and communicators to assist the American Red Cross/
- Logistics in New York have been difficult; roads are flooded, power is out, cell towers are down.
- Millions are still without power.
The Canadian Red Cross has been blogging about Sandy for over a week now and you can read their stories on the Red Cross Talks blog. Follow @RedCrossCanada on Twitter for more information and make your donations through the Canadian Red Cross.
The Red Cross is also still assisting in the hard-hit areas of the Caribbean and donations can be made to support those efforts as well.
Vancouver is a fun city in the summer with free, public activities like outdoor movies and dancing in the park — and that doesn’t stop when the weather cools off. The Robson Square ice rink will be filled up and surfaced to host free ice skating once again this winter.
Photo credit:
BC Gov Photos – Submitted to the Miss604 Flickr Pool
According to an email I received from the rink manager, Robson Square ice rink will officially open December 1, 2012 and will be in operation until February 28, 2013.
You can stop by for free ice skating all winter long between the hours of 9:00am and 9:00pm (Sunday to Thursday); 9:00am to 11:00pm (Friday and Saturday). Bring your own skates or rent a pair for $4.00 (cash only). Skate rentals close 30 minutes prior to daily rink closure.
The Robson Square ice rink is located beneath Robson street between Howe and Hornby. It is accessible via the courthouse steps on one side of Robson or the Vancouver Art Gallery steps on the other. Follow @UBCRobsonSquare on Twitter for information this season.
If you’ve lived in Vancouver long enough there are a few things that become a part of your everyday routine. At noon the O! Canada horns will sound at Canada Place, at 9:00pm the Nine O’Clock Gun will fire, and at around 5:30pm tens of thousands of crows will retreat to Burnaby from Vancouver.
I call it the “crow commute”. It’s as though 10,000 of the black birds pack their lunches every day and set out from the Willingdon area and head downtown, to Stanley Park, and surrounding beaches. A silent whistle blows at the end of the day and they all return home in one steady, ominous stream of black spots across the sky.
The Burnaby roost has been in use since about 1971. Prior to that, crows left the city for the evening. One roost was on Bowyer Island in Howe Sound. Crows from across the North Shore, UBC, and Stanley Park would make the late afternoon commute to the forested hills of Bowyer. A much smaller roost was somewhere up Indian Arm. Other roosts were in Richmond near the former dump along Highway 99. [Vancouver Sun, 2010]
When it comes to birds in the city, we have our share of french fry-stealing sea gulls and sidewalk-crowding pigeons along with photo-op worthy herons, owls, and bald eagles. Crows are low on the ‘nuisance’ meter for me but other West End residents didn’t always think so.
I was browsing the Vancouver Archives this week and discovered that on this day in 1903 crows were considered such a pain that the city decided to turn a blind eye to the firearm by-law in Stanley Park and allow sportsmen to shoot crows.
From Chuck Davis’ History of Metropolitan Vancouver: Crows made the news with a plan to allow sportsmen into Stanley Park “to exterminate the pest.” A bounty of “five cents per head up to 5,000 head” was offered and the park was closed to the public. Although a by-law banned the discharge of firearms within the park, officials said they would look the other way.
This wasn’t the first time that the people of Vancouver were fed up with crows. Chuck Davis also posted a piece from The Province from August 1900 where a letter to the editor states: “There are few residents in the city and particularly in the West End who are not disturbed in their slumbers from 5 a.m. by the fearful and nerve-killing noises made by the crows. A vote should be taken as to whether the people want crows or not.”
Over 100 years later, the immeasurable group flies over our heads every day, like clock work, perhaps to remind us of our past attempts to exterminate them. It seems like West End residents have finally learned to live peacefully with the crows or perhaps it’s the crows that have now accepted us.
