I must admit this is a pretty proud moment for me. Not only do I get to use my social media skills to promote and live blog a community event, but this is for a festival in my old neighbourhood, in my hometown – and it’s going to be pretty darn great. Miss604.com is pleased to be an official media partner for Surrey Fusion Festival 2008:
Surrey Fusion Festival will be Surrey’s largest 3-day multicultural celebration with 40 international pavilions celebrating music, food and culture. 5 stages of entertainment with headline performers on the World Music Stage and the Celebrations dance stage, all this in a brand new beautiful urban park.
There will be a world music stage, a headliner stage (including a performance by Juno Award winning Jully Black), a celebration dance stage (featuring Irish dancers, entourages from Korea and China, Elite Bhangra and Hip-Hop crews, traditional oriental artistry, historical Persian performances, salsa, sambas, caporeia, calypso and modern tap).
Food, activities for kids, three days in the sunshine (crossing our fingers on that one) and the cost? In the grand tradition of other community event like Winterfest, Surrey’s Fusion Festival is absolutely FREE to everyone. Simply enjoy Canada’s 2008 Cultural Capital and if you’re still not convinced, I’ll have blog posts and Flickr photos being published throughout the entire weekend to entice you out.
We’re still a few months away and there’s a lot to prepare for, check the website for updates and if you would like to help out they’re also in need of 200 volunteers. Find out more on the Surrey Fusion Festival site.
Oodles of glorious sunshine being predicted for this weekend gets me thinking about outdoor activities. Should a Metro Vancouverite feel like a mini-escape, perhaps even a multi-hour adventure in a single day, what are the options? I’ve decided to pull from a pool of childhood Sunday drive memories and highlight a few gems in this new series: Day Tripping.
Located just over an hour outside of Vancouver, heading East on Hwy 1, you’ll come to the lovely town of Hope (also known as the gateway to holidayland).
Once in Hope you can split off to the Crowsnest Highway, which will take you along Southern BC to the Alberta border, up to the Fraser Canyon along Highway 1 (Trans Canada), or take the 5 along the Coquihalla to Merritt and beyond. More info about regional highways is available at DriveBC. However, there is much benefit to staying in the Hope-land area.
Aside from being a great breakfast spot with amazing mountain views nestled between those evergreen-covered giants, hope is also very historically significant for BC. Located along the Fraser River it was a major pit stop for those gold-rushing up the canyon.
The area I would like to feature is Coquihalla Canyon Park which is more commonly known as the Othello Tunnels. This quintet of railway tunnels, originally part of the Kettle Valley Railway are intertwined with a series of bridges which follow a relatively straight line through a gorge lined with sheer, flat rock cliffs. [TheKettleValleyRailway]
Trains don’t pass through the tunnels anymore but they’re seriously fun to check out – if you can stand damp darkness and the feeling of being rushed back a hundred years. Here’s an excerpt from a great local resource, FindFamilyFun:
If you have a flashlight, bring it. There are puddles inside the tunnels and I stepped right in the middle of one. In between the tunnels are viewing spots where you can see the Coquihalla River. Be careful, it’s a long way down.
Age group: I saw people from all ages going to the tunnels. You may not enjoy it as much if you don’t like walking (because it takes about 15 minutes to get there), or if you’re scared of the dark.
Oh yes, and there are bats… just so you know.
We used to go trudging through with my dad (while my mom sat in the car) and always enjoyed the adventure. I haven’t been in about 20 years but it looks like the paths are more cleared away and marked, I recalled saying, “are we supposed to be here?” several times thinking a train was going to rush up behind us at any minute.
In grade 12 for my provincial exam in English our essay theme was “Hope” and I wrote purely about our adventures to Hope and the Othello Tunnels. I’m sure they were looking for something more traditionally inspirational, but seeing my score of 90% lead me to believe the board appreciated my spin.
The Othello Tunnels make a great day trip, and I would also recommend stopping in at Rolly’s in Hope for breakfast on your way out there (if you like the vinyl booth + eggs n’ sausage with never-ending coffee breakfasts like we do). Around the corner on Fraser Street there’s also one of those wooden boards with a space cutout to insert your head on Rambo’s body. Good times.
In terms of workshops dedicated to the development and discussion of Content Management Systems (CMS) we’ve recently had DrupalCamp, WordCamp, and now it’s time for Canada’s largest-ever Joomla! Day.
On June14th 2008 from 9:00 AM to 5:30 please join us to celebrate what could be the largest Joomla! Day in Canada! We will be getting together at the Vancouver Public Library and there you get to meet many of the people who actually created the Joomla! CMS framework. [RMDstudio]
Tickets are $25 and include refreshments and a Joomla! Day t-shirt, check out the RMDstudios blog or the Tazzu blog for more information.
I must admit, I’ve dabbled in all sorts of open source platforms and although my time with Joomla was minimal it’s still great to see that it has such a widely supportive user base.
The thing I love about living in the West End is that once you walk in a block from the bustling Robson or Davie Streets the sound of cars and crowds turns into lawn mowers and birds chirping. Green grass grows in small corner parks like urban savannas while sunbathers find a level surface on which to stretch out and avoid the game of frisbee being played over their head. One of such metropolitan refuges is Barclay Heritage Square and one of its main features is Roedde House.
Roedde House at 1415 Barclay was built in 1893 for Vancouver’s first bookbinder, Gustav Roedde. In 1927 the house was sold by Gustav Roedde in 1927 to H.W. Jeffreys and it later became a boarding house called the ‘Oehlerking Rooms.’
The City of Vancouver bought the Gustav Roedde House [in 1966] and made it the centrepiece in what came to be called Barclay Heritage Square, bounded by Barclay, Nicola, Haro and Broughton Streets in the West End, and which features nine historic houses built between 1890 and 1908.
In 1990 the restored Roedde House Museum opened its doors for community events and tours. Having done many tours of Victoria during our girls weekends, I’ve become pretty familiar with the architects that formed our big coastal cities in BC, however I had no clue that there were murmurs that Francis Mawson Rattenbury built Roedde House. Rattenbury being the designer of the Vancouver Art Gallery (former Court House) and Victoria’s Parliament Buildings and Empress Hotel [VancouverHistory].
John and I have yet to make our way over to Roedde House for a tour (Tuesday to Friday, 2:00pm to 4:00pm), or even Sunday tea (served from 2:00pm to 4:00pm) but it’s definitely on our list of things to do. They also do group tours by appointment, lecture series, musical evenings special events, and you can book the entire house for a small dinner party at a per hour rate.
Since my mother’s birthday and Mother’s Day are so close together in the month of May, I figured a consolidated post wouldn’t make me look too cheap, would it?
Reasons for not writing on the subject yesterday include the fact that my mom was out of the country and wouldn’t have been able to read this anyway. Instead of writing out some sappy words I’ve decided to include some photos, sort of a visual aid to demonstrate just how far John and I have come.
In short, we wouldn’t have been able to get from here…
To here…
…Without the love and support of two ladies, whose strength (and patience) is that of a super-human.
Now for the sappy part… John and I are both the youngest our families and are really close with our mothers – who I think both refer to us still as their “babies” to friends, family, and that lady at the checkout in the grocery line up last week. While our older siblings were off at school we’d chill with our moms during the day, I’d like to think that I was my mom’s sidekick during those years. You know we’d hang out, go to the store, take a bus to see Oma and Opa, and I’d pretend to nap while she watched All My Children.
We might not get around to saying it often enough but our moms are the bee’s knees and while one is only a few cities away and the other is across the continent, both never leave our hearts and thoughts.
