We salute them every night at 7:00pm during the shift change at St Paul’s (and beyond), the BC Government has finally waived hospital parking fees, and now many restaurants are offering discounts for frontline workers in Vancouver.
It’s really moving to see the restaurant industry, that has been hit so hard itself, give back to its community. Here are some resources for take-out and delivery options that you can share with your friends and loved ones who are courageously fighting COVID-19 on behalf of us all.
Restaurant Discounts for Frontline Workers in Vancouver
The most robust and complete resource is Breaking Bread. It launched a few weeks ago to provide an up-to-date catalogue of restaurant take-out and delivery options (including eateries that had not previously ever offered the service). They have a searchable list of discount offers here »
“Giving thanks to the healthcare professionals by keeping them caffeinated and nourished. Purchase a gift card that goes directly to Peace Arch Hospital or Hilltop Medical Clinic. To load a gift card, call in or send an etransfer”
Free delivery and 25% off all regular priced take out menu items. “We also know that it is difficult for front line workers to pick up so the owners Dominic and Suzanne are personally offering to deliver to Front Line teams and individuals for orders over $100.”
“We are working with @feedtheheroesvan to offer large orders to be sent to the workers of various healthcare facilities in the greater Vancouver area. Donations are accepted here.”
Other restaurants not in the Breaking Bread database include:
Restaurant:Bombay Kitchen & Bar, (604) 336-1111, Vancouver Offer: Health-care workers can order online for delivery to their medical facility or doctor’s office and will receive 50 percent off at time of payment.
Restaurant:Tractor Foods, Vancouver Offer: Michelle Porter Vancouver Real Estate has generously donated free lunch or dinner to all frontline workers. Stop the Ash & Broadway location and choose anything on the menu (up to $15 in value) and @porteryvr will take care of your meal. Make sure to bring your ID or badge to claim.
Restaurant:Afghan Kitchen (604) 727-0070, Surrey Offer: Offering 30% discount on pick-up orders for: Hospital staff, including doctors, nurses, residents, interns, and support staff; First responders, including paramedics, emergency medical technicians, police officers, firefighters, rescuers, and military personnel
#ChopstickstoHeroes
As a continued effort to support local businesses, the Chinese Restaurant Awards have co-created the Chopsticks to Vancouver Health Care Heroes #ChopstickstoHeroes campaign, starting April 6, 2020.
30 local Asian restaurants will prepare and donate 50 dinner meals. 100 meals per day over a 15 day period will be sent to health care workers at the Vancouver General Hospital. A total of 1,500 nutritious meals with vegetarian options will meet the donation requirements and food safety standards outlined by the Vancouver General Hospital. You can contact the organizers if you’d like to sponsor some of these meals.
Bamboo Groove Restaurant Cherry’s Food House Chow Fusion Restaurant Dinesty Dumpling House Emperor’s Kitchen Fortune Terrace Chinese Cuisine Geng Shi Ji Glorious Bao & Fried Rice Gram Cafe and Pancakes Hotpot Palace Jianghu Taiwanese Pots & Wok Cuisines Liuyishou Hotpot Lougheed Wonton Restaurant M Sushi M8 Bistro and Bar Me and Crepe
Memory Corner Micha New Fishport Seafood Bistro New Mandarin Seafood Restaurant Old Beijing Roast Duck Peninsula (Oakridge) Seafood Restaurant Shine Valley Lamb Soup Sip Bowl La Mian The Dolar Shop The Fish Man Tian Shi Fu Restaurant Uno Beef Noodle Yang Guo Fu Spicy Soup Yuan’s Hotpot
We need to support those fighting COVID-19 for us, and we need to help them do their job. Please stay home and help flatten the curve.
If you know of more participating eateries, please leave a comment below and I’ll add it to the list, thank you!
I have a private wine club with my sister and a few close friends which usually meets every month in the summer. In March, we have already hosted two weekly meetings on Zoom. Usually our get togethers include everyone bringing the same varietal, from the BC winery of their choice. We then taste, take notes, and post our favourite to our Facebook group. The virtual meetings are far less structured.
This is where Okanagan Crush Pad (“OCP”) could really help my group — and yours. Invite one of their team members to your next online happy hour and turn it into a rather civilized wine tasting event!
Virtual Wine Tasting with Okanagan Crush Pad
Due to recent physical distancing, virtual gatherings over platforms like Skype, Messenger, Instagram, and Zoom have become very popular, including happy hour and friends getting together over wine. But missing is the experience of talking to a wine expert as you taste along with your friends or work colleagues.
While OCP has previously posted video of guided tastings, the makers of Haywire, Narrative and Free Form are now going a step further. Just follow these four steps:
Can’t get together in person? Round up the people you are missing most;
Each person buys a wine tasting pack (2 full bottles and 1 half bottle);
Set a date and time for your online tasting with your friends;
Coordinate the details with OCP Wine brand ambassador Rawan* by emailing her at rawan@hq-wine.com
*An OCP team member will be part of any gathering where four or more wine tasting packs are sold (12 bottles total – 8 full bottles and 4 half bottles). There is no maximum size, but the ideal gathering would be no larger than 12 different logins.
Wine Tasting Packs from OCP
Pack 1 ($70.70) 1 x 375ml Haywire Baby Bub 2018 1 x 750 ml Free Form Cabernet Franc 2017 1 x 750 ml Narrative Viognier 2018 Order here »
Pack 2 ($87.30) 1 x 375ml Narrative Baby XC Method 2019 1 x 750 ml Free Form Vin Gris 2018 1 x 750 ml Haywire Pinot Noir 2018 Order here »
Crack open a baby sparkling wine while you all sign-on, and toast each other with a cheers! A team member from the winery will join you for the tasting. They will tell you about the wines, answer any questions, and then they can leave the online party and you can carry on with your friends.
Follow Okanagan Crush Pad on Facebook for more info.
Science World’s Online Resources for at Home Activities
There is a robust collection of tools available online here. Search by grade level, preschool to grade 12, select the topic and the type of activity, be it make-and-take, an experiment, an illusion, a game or demonstration.
Each activity includes photos, instructions, and the estimated time it will take to complete. Here’s one of my favourites for creating indoor rainbows:
Example: Indoor Rainbows
Objective: Kids can experiment with white light to make their own rainbows Materials Needed: Small glass vessel (vase, cup or bowl), flashlight, mirror, water What To Do:
Place a mirror in the glass vessel, tilted slightly upward.
Fill the glass vessel with water.
Shine the white light from the flashlight through the glass at the mirror and point out the rainbow. (You may need to darken the room; rainbows should appear on the walls.)
Indoor rainbow! The online guides include questions, helpful images and figures, as well as add-ons to expand your experiments (like polarizing filters for your rainbow).
Following the lead of Canadian Tire and London Drugs, you can now get Girl Guide Cookies at IGA and Fresh St Market, who scooped up another 12,000 boxes!
Girl Guide Cookies at IGA and Fresh St Market
Beginning today, Girl Guide cookies will be available at all IGA and Fresh St. Market locations across British Columbia. All proceeds will benefit Girl Guides of Canada’s ongoing programs.
“Since 1927, Girl Guides have been going door-to-door selling cookies to support our programs,” said Diamond Isinger, provincial commissioner for BC, Girl Guides of Canada. “With physical distancing, we know this is not an option at this time and we need to get creative. We are grateful to community-minded organizations like IGA and Fresh St. Market, who have come forward to offer significant logistical support to get our cookies into the homes of British Columbians, and we couldn’t be more grateful.”
Like many organizations, Girl Guides of Canada has had to find alternative ways to meet fundraising goals essential to the organization. IGA and Fresh St Market are now working together with Girl Guides of Canada to retrieve the thousands of boxes of cookies, and in the safest way possible, make these available to customers so they can enjoy the yummy cookies while supporting Girl Guides to continue offering their in-person educational and leadership programs for girls when pandemic protocols lift.
All sales of the cookies will go directly to Girl Guides of Canada; IGA and Fresh St. Market are simply providing a safe distribution network.
I have reached out to some of my friends around the globe who are originally from the “604” area to see how they’re doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is the second in the Vancouverites in Isolation Elsewhere series:
Vancouverites in Isolation Elsewhere: Robert in Bali
Name: Robert Scales (Website, Instagram) Hometown: Born in Montreal, moved to Vancouver (Kerrisdale) in my 20s. Current City: Nusa Ceningan, Bali, Indonesia
What is your city like right now?
The local government requested that all tourism related businesses stop operating on March 20th until further notice. We do not have a “lockdown” policy in place yet, however the regency has limited/restricted the movement between the islands and people are requested to stay at home, apply social distancing, to not travel between villages, wash hands, and report any illness.
We live on Nusa Ceningan, a very small island located about 30kms from the south east coast of Bali. Our primary economy is tourism. At the moment, there are very few non-local people on the Nusa islands (Nusa Ceningan, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Penida.) Most of the non-local people remaining are expats who own businesses here or stranded travellers who cannot return home due to travel restrictions etc.
Starting this week, you can tune into Vancouver Art Gallery live stream curators’ talks as a part of their new Art Connect series. Follow a virtual tour around current exhibitions and hear from guests from local and international arts communities.
Art Connects: Vancouver Art Gallery Live Stream Curators’ Talks
When: Tuesday and Fridays (starting March 31, 2020) Where: Vancouver Art Gallery’s Zoom channel Admission: Free, register online for the Zoom details. Upon registration, attendees can submit questions and chat directly with fellow attendees during the live stream.
In response to temporary closure of the exhibition spaces due to the current global health pandemic, Arts Connect online gatherings encourage dialogue and connection during this new age of physical distancing. They are free for everyone to join and the weekly conversations will be interactive in nature.
For the first talk on Tuesday, March 31 at 1:30pm, join a special preview of the exhibition, The Tin Man Was A Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics and Performances of Power, with curators Grant Arnold and Mandy Ginson. Together, the curators will walk through the exhibition and speak to the importance of bringing together recent acquisitions from Gallery’s permanent collection to make exciting exhibitions that deal with contemporary issues of our time. Register here »
On Friday, April 3 at 4:30pm, join Afro Van Connect founders Dae Shields and Buni Kor to discuss freestyling, power and exchange in music. Joined by artist Quentin VerCetty, they will share their thoughts on Black spaces, speculative futures and Afrofuturism, before presenting a live freestyle performance. The discussion will be moderated by Stephanie Bokenfohr, Adult Programs Coordinator. Register here »
Art has the power to connect individuals, communities and cultures. No matter its form, art encourages communication, broadens perspectives, enriches the mind and renews the spirit. During challenging times, art can uplift the community through enriching and culturally meaningful experiences. Stay tuned for next week’s schedule.
Extended Schedule
Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 1:30pm: Ashlee Conery and Tarah Hogue In conjunction with the exhibition lineages and land bases, Ashlee Conery, Curatorial Coordinator—Interpretation, and Tarah Hogue, Senior Curatorial Fellow, Indigenous Art, will reveal the curatorial decisions and interpretive lenses used in the exhibition to reframe understandings of Emily Carr’s paintings and bring to light the basketry made by her friend of 33 years, Sewiṉchelwet Sophie Frank.
Friday, April 10, 2020 at 4:30pm: Howie Tsui and Diana Freundl In conjunction with the exhibition Howie Tsui: Retainers of Anarchy artist Howie Tsui and Diana Freundl, Interim Chief Curator / Associate Director, will reveal, for the first time, the artistic and curatorial decisions reached to commission a twenty-five-metre, hand-drawn animation that threads together the social and political realities of past and present-day Hong Kong.
