There’s a reason why Surrey Fusion Festival has won an international award for Best Festival, it really is a highlight of summer, where dozens of cultures come together with music, dance, food, and fun for the whole family.

Surrey Fusion Festival

Where: Saturday, July 23 & Sunday, July 24, 2016 from 11:00am to 10:00pm
When: Holland Park (SW Corner of King George Blvd & Old Yale Rd in Surrey)
Admission: FREE! You’ll want to bring some cash or use the ATM on site to scoop up some food tickets so you can sample from over 40 vendors from just as many nations.

Photos by John Bollwitt for Miss604

Entertainment Lineup

Check out the entertainment on the YVR Community Stage, demos at the Safeway Cooking Stage, the Canada 150 Stage, SFU Celebration Stage, and the main Concord Pacific World Music Stage.

Maxi Priest, Alex Cuba, Delhi 2 Dublin top the list of performers. There’s also entertainment from The Re-Enactors (Surrey history stories), Polish Theatre, and Rockin’ Robin. Take a First Nations hoop dance lesson, watch a Polish Folk Dance Group, listen to beats from Jan-Michael Reyes, watch the BC Cultural Bhangra Academy and Surrey Folk Bhangra Club, learn from SuperChefs, Chef Trevor Randle, Tammy Wood, and much more.

Photos by John Bollwitt for Miss604

Feel the beat of Zimbabwean marimba with West African and Afrocuban percussion, and listen to afro-bearing Guyanese-Canadian soul queen Krystle Dos Santos. Local talent, Good For Grapes, The Boom Booms, and Dawn Pemberton will perform, and Mayor and Council will welcome all to the festival on Saturday.

Cultural Pavilions

Shop, sample, taste, and play at these cultural pavilions:

The full schedule is available online, along with the list of performers, chefs, dancers, pavilions, and much more. For the latest updates, follow @Surrey_Events on Twitter or “Like” the Surrey Fusion Festival Facebook Page. Follow the #SurreyFusion tag to join in the conversation.

Take Off Fridays are back at YVR Airport this summer, with free family fun at the best airport on the continent!

Take Off Fridays at YVR

The 7th annual summer celebration will kick off Friday, July 8th and run every Friday until August 26th from 9:00am to 3:00pm. Enjoy delicious treats and lunch specials from locations throughout the airport as well as FREE entertainment including live musicians, DJs, caricaturists, face painters and our very own YVR Paper Airplane Folding Zones.

Highlights this year include visits from community partners including: The Vancouver Aquarium Aquabus, TapSnap, The Vancouver Canadians, Canucks Autism Network, and the Coca-Cola Hug Me Machine. In August, the popular Emergency Response Airside Demonstrations will return to the Public Observation Area from 11:00am to 11:30am.

Join YVR’s Explorer Tours every Friday at 11:00am in front of The Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Jade Canoe for a free one-hour pre-security walking tour to learn about our art and architecture.

Pick up a voucher from any Customer Information Counter to receive 5 hours of parking for $5 for Take Off Fridays. To save the commute, take the Canada Line which arrives directly at YVR.

Visit a YVR Selfie Station in terminal for your chance to win a $1,000 UNIGLOBE Travel voucher plus a $500 YVR shopping spree! Take a photo and use #YVRTakeOffFridays on social media for your chance to win.

The biggest Latin festival in the Pacific Northwest, Carnaval de Sol, is happening July 9th and 10th at Concord Pacific Place. This is a free, family-friendly event with live music, art, dance, sports, and poetry in celebration of Latin American Culture. Bringing together more than 350 artists from different Latin American countries, a big part of the festival will be the Kids Plaza at Carnaval del Sol.

Kids Plaza at Carnaval del Sol

• Mini Chefs: Children will have the opportunity to play and learn how to cook and express their creativity at the kitchen.
• Arts and Crafts: Kids can create, paint, build, colour, and more.
• Spa for Kids: A place for girls and boys who want to have a manicure, do their hair, or have decorative face painting.
• Fairground: Children can perform all typical fairground (midway) activities such as shooting hoops, clown toss, etc. Tickets that are won can be exchanged for prizes.
• Mini City: Kids can learn something about cityscapes such as streets, traffic lights, and signs. There will be small cars available for the very young ones to operate along a marked path.
• Pinatas: will be there for the children to break open during both days of Carnaval del Sol.
• Dance Stage: Join the greatest dance stage and show off your Salsa, Bachata, Samba, and Zumba moves.

Kids Plaza also provides a general play area where one adult member of the family can watch the children while the others go off and enjoy other areas of the Carnaval. There will be staff to keep the area generally safe and clean, although the actual supervision of individual children needs to be done by at least one parent. Latincouver is not equipped to provide a daycare facility and does not assume any liability for children using this area.

The shared objective of Carnaval del Sol and Latin American Week is to act as a much-needed bridge between Vancouver’s rapidly growing Latin American communities and other communities. Arts and culture are universal languages that unite people and allow cities to grow and thrive.

For more information, follow Carnaval del Sol on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

On Sunday afternoon, smoke billowed from Burns Bog, a 3,500 hectare ombrotrophic peat bog in Delta. It could be seen from the Fraser Valley to the North Shore, with ash falling in Delta and Surrey, and many Vancouverites (myself included) woke in the wee hours of the morning due to an overwhelming wildfire smell Downtown.

Burns Bog Fire

The “Lungs of the Lower Mainland” have been burning for the last day, with 10% of the 50-70 hectare fire contained on Monday morning. In a press conference Monday morning, Delta Fire Chief said they have 80 firefighters battling the blaze and due to the fire behaving as they hoped overnight, they’ll be using helicopters to continue to setup a water perimeter for containment — planes will stay on standby on the ground.

About Burns Bog

The bog is the largest undeveloped urban landmass in North America, is a globally unique ecosystem, and is a major regulator of regional climate. It’s a vital stopover for migratory birds, and home to rare and endangered species. It is the largest raised peat bog on the west coast of the Americas, and since 1988, the Burns Bog Conservation Society has been spreading awareness of this massively important environmental feature in our region.

Fires are not uncommon in the bog, due to its methane-rich peat. Large fires have occurred in 1977, twice in 1990, 1994, 1996, 2005, 2007, and now 2016.

Originally, the bog was 10,000-12,000 acres before development, what remained, over the years, has been up for proposal to be turned into a deep sea port, landfill, a racetrack, and even a new site for the PNE/Playland.

Bog Timeline

[Timeline source: Corporation of Delta]

In 1906 Dominic Burns, brother of Senator Patrick Burns, purchased most of the Great Delta Bog. Peat mining began in the 1930s and would continue for over 50 years. In 1991, residents requested that Burns Bog be designated as an ecological reserve. The matter was brought before council and defeated, with the reasoning that the bog designation would be considered during the next revision of the Official Community Plan.

In 1999, 75% Delta’s voters supported the purchase of Burns Bog by the city. In 2000, a comprehensive review of the Burns Bog ecosystem concluded that 73% of Burns Bog (2,200 of 3,000 hectares) must be protected to maintain its ecological integrity.

Canada and the Province of British Columbia announced a formal offer to purchase and permanently protect Burns Bog in 2001, with partners being Delta and the Greater Vancouver Regional District. The offer was rejected by the landowners. Multi-government efforts continued until 2004 when Canada, British Columbia, GVRD, and Delta purchased 2,042 ha (5,046 acres) of Burns Bog, to be preserved in perpetuity as an environmental reserve. Burns Bog was saved.

In May of 2008, the Burns Bog Ecological Conservancy Area Management plan was adopted by all four purchasing partners (Delta, Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, and Canada).

When safe to do so, you can walk along boardwalk trails, cycle, and hike around the Burns Bog Trail or take a public tour.

Follow the Burns Bog Conservation Society on Facebook and Twitter for more information about the region. While the fire is still a concern, follow Delta Police on Twitter along with your local news outlet.

On the western coast of the country, Vancouver, which is 19 years younger than Canada itself, has always known how to celebrate our nation’s birthday in style. Known as Dominion Day until 1982, Canada Day has traditionally been a time for family fun, parades, picnics, and afternoons at the beach. Not much has changed — we may have more fireworks and beer gardens now — but here’s a quick glimpse back at Canada Day in Vancouver over the years, thanks to the City of Vancouver Archives collections:

Vintage Photos of Canada Day in Vancouver

The first celebration of Dominion Day in BC was in 1878:

1878 Colonial Hotel. Archives# Bu P738.

Procession on Cordova Street:

1890 by Bailey and Neelands. Archives# CVA 1376-375.20.

Military parade on Granville in 1900:

1900. Archives# Mil P30.

Parade at Hastings & Granville:

1900. Archives# Str P391.1.

Yacht races in English Bay:

1907. Archives# Bo P81.2.

A Dominion Day at the beach at English Bay:

1911 by Stuart Thomson. Archives# Be P101.

Opening day for the Georgia Harris Viaducts on July 1st:

1915 by WJ Moore. Archives# CVA 677-535.

Outside Woodward’s on Dominion Day with Old Glory and the Union Jack:

1924. Hastings & Abbott. Archives# CVA 809-24.

King Neptune and the “Jantzen Girls” pulling a Royal Life Saving float in a Dominion Day parade:

1955 by Stuart Thomson. Archives# Port P258.1.