Last September I profiled two local women who are gearing up for a marathon run in support of Team Diabetes Canada. One of them was Candice, whom I’ve known since junior high school. Her run is coming up in July, and in an effort to do some fundraising she is hosting a pub night in April.
Where: The Hook and Ladder Pub in Surrey
What: Fundraiser for Candice’s Team Diabetes Marathon run
When: Dinner is at 7:00pm on Saturday April 4, 2009
More info: Tickets are $15 – and include an all you can eat pasta buffet (2 types of pasta, 2 types of sauce, Ceasar salad & garlic bread). They are available for purchase through Candice.
There will also be a raffle along with other great ways to win prizes. If you have an item you’d like to donate to the raffle, leave a comment on this post for Candice or so that I can relay the information to her.
A few weeks ago I was trying to come up with a history post one day and I put the call out to my contacts on Twitter, asking what they would want to know about local history. As a result I received several great tips and suggestions, which I have been researching and publishing bit by bit.
The following is the latest installment of my History Tidbits series based on a response by @6oz, asking about the Guinness family’s influence on the region. However, this particular segment was written, researched, and contributed to Miss604.com by Anita Webster of Anita Webster Communications. She is a Vancouver public relations gal, aspiring blogger, and really great for putting this together:
Recent news about bridges, tunnels and tolls reminded me of a toll booth from our city’ past. I am a third-generation Vancouverite – yes, there are a few of us around – and as I grew up on the North Shore I remember my family paying a toll to cross the Lions Gate Bridge. My parents say the toll was something that gave them pause before they bought their land in West Van.
Also known as the First Narrows Bridge, the Lions Gate Bridge was built by the Guinness family – the Irish beer barons – to provide access to the north shore of the city. The Guinnesses had purchased 4,000 acres in what is now West Vancouver for $18.75 an acre – and were busy developing it.
Bridge construction started in 1937 and was completed the following year for just under $6 million. The bridge originally had two lanes.
To recover their construction costs the Guinness family had toll booths installed at the north end of the bridge. When the tolls were instituted, a weekly auto ticket cost $1.25, pedestrians paid 7.5 cents per crossing and cars were 25 cents (plus 5 cents per extra passenger).
As West Vancouver grew, demand on the span increased and in 1952 the two lanes were divided into three. Hair-raisingly, the centre lane was controlled by a blinking amber light and was for passing – in either direction.
1952 was also the year toll revenues had finally covered cost of construction. The Guinness family sold the bridge to the provincial government in 1955 though the tolls continued until 1963. I guess we paid for the bridge twice.
My parents, delighted at the news the tolls were gone, saved the money they had been spending on toll tickets and bought a Danish chair still in their house and still known as the Lions Gate Bridge chair.
The Guinness Family’s last involvement with the bridge was when they had lights installed along its graceful lines as a gift the our city for Expo 86.
More information can be found at the West Vancouver Memorial Library or the North Vancouver Museum and Archives.
Read more about Anita Webster on her website, Anita Webster Communications, or follow her on Twitter.
The History Tidbits series will continue at a later date with:
@TylerIngram History of the McBarge
@kdmurray – Some Burrard Inlet History
@davidshore – Why/how the CPR landed in Vancouver
The big conference is over so Miss604.com will return to its regular format tomorrow and I’ll also be launching a fun new contest that my readers can enter.
It’s my father’s birthday so we’re heading out to Surrey (as we sometimes do on Sundays per my story in the The Province this morning). To say that my dad has influenced my life would be an understatement. In fact I’m pretty sure I love blogging so much because of him — but this isn’t about blogging.
My mom is a creative writer (who should really start publishing some of her mystery stories one day) but ever since I was little my dad was the story-teller. Before bedtime we’d ask for a story from when he was a boy, growing up in another province or in Vancouver during the later years. Whenever we’d go on a drive he would have a story about the route, the road, the park, or the city we were in. He is the smartest person that I know and was my own personal Google for many years — my sister and I would usually call him up to fact-check anything, anytime.
I don’t see my dad that often, even though we’re only 40 minutes apart, and I’ll probably be seeing less of him later this year. I think it’s important to acknowledge and appreciate where we’ve come from and the people who not only shaped who we are and what we’ve become, but the people that inspire us, even in small ways, each and every day.
My dad took us to play pond hockey at Fry’s Corner when the flooded fields froze and to Expo 86 every weekend. He never missed attending any of my rugby games in high school (a sport I played because he was a rugby champ before I was born). He was the one who woke up at 5:30am to make me a quick breakfast before I left for school to attend one of my many clubs or meetings, and he’s the reason I love camping (even though mom always scolded him for leading us into “bear country”). He’s the reason I’m not afraid to go on a 3 hour hike and get my boot stuck in mud.
He’s the reason I have this photo of my brother and me on Texada Island from July 1982 (even though until I found this I had no I idea I had ever been to Texada Island before). My dad is also the reason why I say the word “trousers”… if even in jest.
It’s because of him that I started playing with computers when I was 10 years old (and why I have a 14.4 modem in my closet right now). When I packed up and moved to Boston for my job with only weeks notice, he was supportive. He was also very gracious when I brought home a boy from Iowa that I met through internet and was kind enough to walk me down the aisle and give me away to him.
He’s the reason why I wanted to start my own company, and he’s the reason why I write about local history. He’s the reason why Sundays are for family time. He’s the reason I love the rain.
I first started delving into the works of the legendary Bev Davies only just over a year ago but after discovering what I have (which is simply scratching the surface) I realized what an important person she is to rock and roll history, along with Vancouver history.
Along with Kris Krug, whose rock photography is recent yet not any less inspiring and captivating, Dave Olson will guide these two through a journey of their craft both on and offline.
“I wanted to start with something a little bit bigger than that, which is why you are taking these photos,” asks Dave while avoiding conversations about aperture and depth of field etc.
Bev was working at the Georgia Straight during some of these shots, including one of Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden. “I was collecting, I wasn’t sure what I was collecting for but I was.”
Why are you there if everyone else is there? With regards to crammed photo pits that Krug has been a part of (while Bev was often the only camera at a punk show back in the day.
The next slide is Iggy Pop, decades apart – one from Davies, another from Krug. “I have a real crush on men that wear eye makeup,” says Bev.
Krug says Davies is “one of the pillars on which the entire movement is built,” talk ing to how she captured these moments and opened doors for fans and photographers.
Dave asks how perspectives change when you’re a fan versus just showing up at a concert – how does your appreciation and passion for the subject affect your shots?
“There’s also a pressure to get a good photograph, whether you’re doing it for a newspaper, a magazine, or for yourself.”
Bev’s style changed with digital, while Krug carries a big kit almost everywhere (although sometimes it’s left in a corner until he needs to pull it out get snap some unmissable shots).
Dave loves to casual shots, talking about the edginess of the Dead Kennedys (as photographed by Bev) but behind the scenes both Bev and Kris can capture those more casual moments. Pointing to the Dead Kennedys shot Dave notes, “And look like them, they look like the IT department at work!”
He also asks them to talk about those surprising and candid moments and Bev describes the joy of photographing the band interacting with each other – capturing their times with each other, not just the poses for the fans, posters, and calendar covers.
Dave, “once you get to know an artist is it easier to shoot them?” Bev got a heads up from members of DOA whenever something noteworthy was going to take place ie. the burning of the guitar that we see in an image on the screen.
Tips for getting caught without accreditation? Krug swaps out memory cards, while Bev says “in the bra” worked for her. However there is the fear of being blacklisted – you don’t want to totally go nuts.
How do you go in and capture these shots full of movement? Bev says, “stand at the front.” With regards to workflow, you’d get that one shot and what happens to the rest? Bev references her 144 Punk Rock Photos exhibit that Dave actually covered a while back. She says she’s been working on archiving her photos digitally by scanning them over the last two years — Dave does a quick shout out for an intern for Bev.
Dave pulls up two comparison photos of shadowed, backlit rockers and Bev says you’re always aiming for the eyes, face definition etc. but sometimes you just have to “start shooting for the shape, rather than the content and let the shape tell a story.”
More shots without faces appear on screen including one from a backstage perspective of the frontman’s legs, shoes, then the lit up faces of the audience. “I was just standing back in one area and again, I just liked the shape,” noted Bev and she says she started noticing the shoes and footwear of bands — quirky examples of connecting (or not) with a band through all artistic aspects.
“It’s one thing to shoot your buddy’s punk band but it’s another for these bigger shows just to get in and get your camera in there,” Dave asks Bev and Kris about access. Kris says, “it’s always the same dudes at most of the same places, life’s long and you don’t want to burn out right away,” his advice is to take it easy – even show them some shots you’re taking on the fly.
Bev’s shot for The Province and the Georgia Straight before so she knows the difference between having “access” to the photo pit compared to looking out and seeing cameras in the crowd — be one with the audience if you can, whenever you can. The photo that’s up on screen for this part of the discussion is one Bev took of Madonna during her first concert… ever.
“Look we have a young earnest Bono (look his head was only tiny then,” Dave says pointing to a shot Bev took of Bono that’s up on the screen. Bev notes that she’s getting all kinds of feedback from Flickr – people saying she could crop and photoshop these images although I think we all realize the impact of her captures of these moments and these people at this point in their careers far out weighs any ‘photoshopping’ criticism.
Pressed for time, Dave rips through the remaining slides and the final image is of the band “The Spores” at a concert in Surrey that Bev took and a little young DaveO is right there, in black and white, in the audience.
Update: Slides from this presentation are available online.
The first Northern Voice 2009 session following lunch in room 1005 here at the UBC Forestry Sciences building is Robert Scales (of Raincity fame) along with Dr Andy Miah, whose various credits include writing for the Huffington Post during the 2008 Beijing Olympics (he also came all the way here from Scotland, just for this!)
Photo from Beijing last summer:
Scales on Flickr
Update: With the network issues I will attempt to update real-time but if that doesn’t work I’ll take notes and publish them here as soon as I’m back online.
Update: I have just been informed that there is a full panel for this talk, including DaveO as well who just blew on a big red horn to get our attention. “Michael Phelps has got nothing on these lungs.”
Debbi Lander came here from England as she is on the Cultural Committee for London 2012.
“I’m going to have the chance to see the third Olympics in Canada,” says Scales as he leads off the presentation. He gives us a run through of Canadian Olympic moments and says he’s definitely a fan.
He went to Turin in 2006 as independent media (through the non-accredited media centre) along with Kris Krug and covered it from a local perspective ie. hockey in the streets, and the impact on local culture. In 2008 he went to Beijing, which was a small leap from the Raincity offices in Shanghai. He was able to collaborate and create a document about the spirit of the Olympics with various research. Scales attended various events including achieving one of his goals of seeing Olympic fencing. As a result, the BBC picked up some of his work and asked him to write an Olympic diary. When he returned to Vancouver he opened more dialogue with VANOC and eventually became accredited through the BC International Media Centre. With that, a representative from the BCIMC comes up for a quick talk about how Olympics
“The international media centre for the 2010 Games will be at Robson Square,” and he says he’s been faced with how to accredit bloggers, “let me tell you that we’re not there yet,” but they are working on it. “We do want folks to register.”
January 29th 2010 the media centre will open and will have an auditorium about the size of the one we’re in. The majority of the money for the media centre will be spent on the pipe – so everyone can get information in and out as quickly as possible.
Update: Scales now moves on to the London 2012 Games and introduces Andy who is a professor in ethic and emerging technologies at the University of the West of Scotland. He discusses ambush media and marketing ie. billboards that are not sponsored by Olympic sponsors are left empty. As a side note, I think Seattle’s Best Coffee has the rights for 2010 so Starbucks shops near venues such as Whistler Village will have to cover their signs — don’t quote me on this but I believe this is one of Andy’s points. Sort of like how GM Place will now be Canada Hockey Place for two weeks in 2010.
Ambush media consists of things like “reversing the direction of interrogation towards traditional media and then broadcasting the results often before traditional media.” I just found this presentation on Slideshare, which contains more information:
Andy says that in the short term social media can make a bigger impact than the traditional outlets. He also discusses branding and brand protection ie. the London 2012 logo being used for a Facebook group. “The Games time is remarkably different than the years before it, leading up to it.”
Update: DaveO is up next talking about his experience living in Japan in the pre-Nagano times as well as his time in Utah for the Salt Lake City Winter Games, catching 28 events in 13 days.
Don Cherry in Salt Lake City wearing Dave’s hat:
Dave on Flickr
Dave’s coverage was a marathon of photos and video, he was able to catch moments and “microcosms of events” that were taking place and not getting covered ie. the first Olympian from Nepal at the Winter Games. He also describes heading to an Olympic media briefing and being immediately told, “the protesters are over there across the street.” Dave said it sucked because “we’re not journalist-y enough to hang out with the journalists and we’re not protest-y enough to hang out with the protesters.” He says “we’re not here to live stream the women’s figure skating in prime time,” that’s not the idea. “We own as much of the culture about the olympics as the IOC does,” says Dave. “People are coming and i plan to welcome them and make cool stuff.”
world. Update: “Every host nation has the responsibility to push the boundaries of one aspect of the Games,” says Debbi who is up last on the panel. “When the handover happened from Beijing to London they opened a Flickr channel although it wasn’t open to users yet, there was simply a chat.” She says there’s a willingness to bring it into the centre but they’re also discussing if that’s appropriate and “if that can exist in a parallel universe”.
When the handover happened from Beijing to London they opened a Flickr channel although it wasn’t open to users yet, there was simply a chat. “I don’t want to put four years into something that no one wants to ever get to hear about.” She will be working with the ANDFestival, check it out for more details.
