This evening the Vancouver Parks Board voted unanimously to ban smoking in parks and on local beaches.
Vancouver Fire Captain Gabe Roder says if we have another hot and dry summer–like we did last year– then it’s only common sense to have cigarette smoking ban in place. He says it’s a health hazard, a matter of safety and it will be a great way to protect our parks. “We’re in favour of a ban of any type of incendiary type products, fires, barbecues in parks. Those sorts of things don’t go well with the heat and the dryness.” [source: News1130]
The update on the vote came from @News1130Radio on Twitter.
The park board gathered public feedback when it conducted an online survey on the matter last fall. Of 608 participants who chose to do the survey, presented as a pop-up on the park board’s website, 75 per cent favoured making beaches no-smoking areas.
Forty-nine per cent indicated they would use the city’s parks more often if a smoking restriction existed and 81 per cent favoured establishing playing fields as no-smoking areas. Smoking bans are in place in a number of other municipalities, including North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Whistler, White Rock and Kelowna. [source: Vancouver Sun]
Since March 2008 there have been strict no-smoking policies in public spaces, restaurants, patios, and even within 3 metres of a building’s entrance or air vent. The new ban will take effect this September.
[poll id=”51″]
Update January, 2012 – A new smoking ban is in effect for Metro Vancouver Parks as well: “Smokers who light up in any of Metro Vancouver’s regional parks and greenways could soon be hit with a $75 fine. A smoking ban came into effect on New Year’s Day (January 1), and enforcement will begin in February. The no-smoking bylaw, approved by regional directors on September 23, 2011, allows puffing on cigarettes only in signed, designated smoking areas.” – Georgia Straight.
The annual Army & Navy Shoe Sale happens this Wednesday April 21st at 8:00am sharp.
This event which usually sees a line up forming outside before the crack of dawn features designer shoes at rock-bottom prices.
The sale’s been around for over 50 years and in 2008 they sold close to 80,000 pairs of shoes. For 2010, Army & Navy is stocked up with over 100,000 pairs including labels such as Steve Madden, Christian Audigier, Diesel, and Marc Fisher.
Last year I interviewed the Junior Buyer for the Shoe Department at Army & Navy who offered the following pieces of advice:
Wear flip flops for ease of trying on pair after pair
Grab a basket or the complimentary A&N shopping bag, fill it with all the shoes you like, and grab yourself an empty corner to try your shoes on
For those shoppers who aren’t able to make it right at 8:00 am, don’t worry we stock up the shelves all day, and especially for the lunch and after work rush
I’ll be live-tweeting from the downtown location (36 West Cordova Street) Wednesday morning, from around 7:00am.
Tech it Away returns to Vancouver on Earth Day April 22nd as Best Buy partners with local schools to collect and recycle old electronics.
This is my my second year supporting the campaign and this time around there are three different Vancouver schools involved:
Eric Hamber Secondary School – 5025 Willow Street, Vancouver map
Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School – 419 East 24th Avenue, Vancouver map
Killarney Secondary School – 6454 Killarney Street, Vancouver map
Stop by any of these schools on April 22nd from 8:30am until 5:30pm to donate and recycle the following: Computers and laptops, monitors, cables and accessories, printers and fax machines, TVs, cell phones and batteries, VCRs and DVD Players.
Participating schools each get $10,000 from Best Buy to purchase new electronic gear from their stores. As a bonus, an extra $2,000 will be awarded to the school that collects the most recyclable electronics on Thursday. This is the perfect chance to remove the clutter from your house, recycle, and support your local high school.
You can follow the campaign on Twitter by searching for the tag #TechItAway or searching Facebook for the event in your area.
Refuge of Lies
Until May 1
Pacific Theatre
Contributed by Michelle Kim
The play, Refuge of Lies, is based on the real-life story of UBC botany instructor Jacob Luitjens who, in 1992, at the age of seventy-two-years of age, was accused of having collaborated with the Nazis in Holland during World War Two. Vancouver playwright and director Ron Reed was so struck by this scandal, and, in particular, the extent to which the Mennonite church, to which Luitjens belonged defended and supported this man, that he decided to write a theatrical adaptation of the events.
In Reed’s version, devout Mennonite Rudi Vanderhaal (Terence Kelly) confronts his dark past when Dutch-Jew Simone Katzman (Howard Siegal) travels from Holland to Vancouver to publicly reveal that Mr. Vanderhaal is not who he says he is; that in fact, Vanderhaal aided and abetted the Nazis in the murder of his relatives during war and concealed his past when immigrating to Canada fifty years ago.
The play then flips back and forth between the perspective of Vanderhaal and the perspective of Katzman, who is accompanied by his young niece Rachel (Erin Germaine Mahoney). What then ensues is Vanderhaal’s internal battle Vanderhaal externalised through dreams and hallucinations, and an external battle between Katzman and his niece on the justness the nature of justice internalised by silent moments and objects (plastic wrapped sandwiches and old prayer shawls).
Scenographic Designer Laughlin Johnston did an amazing job with the little (but charming) space the Pacific Theatre has. For instance, a bed tucks neatly under the top floor, doubling as both the Vanderhaal residence’s top floor and heaven/dreamland. There were other exquisite touches to the set, like having tiles on the floors and walls imprinted with portraits of Holocaust (symbolizing how memories are part of our internal structure) and having a bathtub, whose facet would occasionally run at the right moment in the play (symbolizing cleansing and rebirth).
Both Kelly and Siegal gave incredibly strong performances, and I found myself switching from empathizing with the old man seeking forgiveness to the old man seeking justice for his families and all victims of the Holocaust. Mahoney, in particular, gave a heartfelt performance of a young Jewish woman, fresh out of university, trying to reconcile the traumatic past of her ancestors and her political beliefs on what constitutes true justice. I also really enjoyed Anthony F. Ingram’s performance as the Mennonite pastor, torn between shepherding his member, Vanderhaal, to the light and really helping him understand that the past is sometimes not past and that forgiveness doesn’t simply happen with just a prayer.
Though I thought the blocking got a little chaotic at times as there was a lot of traffic on stage between the (sometimes short) scenes (I found myself often distracted from the story by watching actors walk through move the set around), I really enjoyed this play. In particular, I really liked the ultimate, over-arching questions Reed poses: What is forgiveness? Who grants forgiveness? And who is the ultimate judge? Man or God?
Michelle Kim is a Vancouver-based novelist and actor. You can read her other posts contributed to Miss604.com here.
A few weeks ago I was flown out to Burlington, Vermont to experience how a globally-recognized all natural ice cream company runs their business.
It was called the Ben & Jerry’s “blogger bash” or “bloggerpalooza” as I joined about a dozen others from online publications around North America in this adventure.
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