There are photo opportunities scattered throughout the Vancouver’s 52-hectare Queen Elizabeth Park. At 152 metres above sea level, it’s the highest point in Vancouver and makes for spectacular views of the park, city, and mountains on the North Shore.
Photos abound of its gorgeously landscaped quarry garden, the arboretum with its collection of exotic and native trees, and views of the city below. There is one spot, arguably the best for views of Vancouver and the North Shore, where the act of photo-taking has been commemorated with bronze statues.
Photo Session Statues in Queen Elizabeth Park
In 1984, artist J. Seward Johnson, Junior gifted “Photo Session” to the park. It features 3 life-sized people posing for a photo, with the city as a backdrop, with another bronze statue posing at the photographer. The statues themselves are in many visitor photos, and are listed in numerous TripAdvisor posts about the park. In 2008, the statue of the photographer was stolen, and many feared it would be melted down for money. It was later found in a field in Aldergrove.
Although a commemoration of photographers at that lookout point today might feature smartphones and selfie sticks, Photo Session continues to draw its own attention, which is why it is today’s Vancouver Icons photo feature:
Other Vancouver Icons posts: City Hall History, BC Sugar, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Museum of Anthropology, Fort Langley Community Hall, Christ Church Cathedral, Waterfront Station, Pacific Central Station, Randall Building Mural, East Van Cross, Robert Burns Statue in Stanley Park, Vancouver Maritime Museum, Flack Block, The Drop, Prospect Point Lighthouse, Engagement, Ovaltine Cafe, The English Bay Slide, Freezing Water #7, Cleveland Dam, Heritage Hall, School of Theology Building at UBC, Gate to the Northwest Passage, St Paul’s Hospital, Capilano Lake, Stawamus Chief, Nine O’Clock Gun, Malkin Bowl, Search, Vancouver Rowing Club, Echoes, Point Atkinson Lighthouse, English Bay Inukshuk, Hollow Tree, Hotel Europe, Lions Gate Bridge Lions, LightShed, Granville Bridge, 217.5 Arc x 13′, Canoe Bridge, Vancouver Block, Bloedel Conservatory, Centennial Rocket, Canada Place, Old Courthouse/Vancouver Art Gallery, Dominion Building, Science World, Gastown Steam Clock, SFU Burnaby, Commodore Lanes, Siwash Rock, Kitsilano Pool, White Rock Pier, Main Post Office, Planetarium Building, Lord Stanley Statue, Vancouver Library Central Branch, Victory Square, Digital Orca, The Crab Sculpture, Girl in Wetsuit, The Sun Tower, The Hotel Vancouver, The Gassy Jack Statue, The Marine Building, and The Angel of Victory. Should you have a suggestion for the Vancouver Icons series please feel free to leave a note in the comments. It should be a thing, statue, or place that is very visible and recognizable to the public.
Audiences are eagerly awaiting the full-scale premiere of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash hit musical Evita, presented by Vancouver Opera April 30th to May 8th at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver.
Vancouver Opera Presents Evita
Winner of 7 Tony Awards™ including Best Musical, Evita is the story of the charismatic and controversial Eva Perón, whose beauty and ambition vaulted her from poverty to power as the First Lady of Argentina.
Set in the politically turbulent 1930s and 1940s, Evita follows Eva’s remarkable journey from small-town slums to the tango clubs of Buenos Aires, through a career in B movies, and to the presidential palace on the arm of her new husband, General Juan Perón. Fearlessly aggressive in defending the rights of workers and the poor, Eva attracted the wrath of the aristocracy and the universal love of the people. Her legend lives on, decades after her death in 1952 at age 33, even as her role in Argentina’s history is revealed with increasing clarity as time goes on.
Vancouver Opera’s Evita will star three seasoned Broadway stars with international followings:
Ramin Karimloo will star as Che. Mr. Karimloo has played both Jean Valjean (Les Misérables) on Broadway and The Phantom (Phantom of the Opera) in London’s West End. He was personally selected by Andrew Lloyd Webber to star in the London World Premiere of the Phantom sequel, Love Never Dies. This will be his first appearance as Che.
Caroline Bowman will play Evita, a role she has also played in the Broadway revival and on tour in the United States. She also starred in the Broadway productions of Wicked (as Elphaba) and in Kinky Boots.
John Cudia will play Perón. Mr. Cudia is the first and only performer to have played the roles of The Phantom and Jean Valjean on Broadway. Equally at home on opera, theatre and concert stages, Mr. Cudia is a lyric tenor who has also sung Alfredo in La traviata with Lyric Opera of the North.
Directed by Kelly Robinson, Conducted by Jonathan Darlington, Choreography by Tracey Flye.
Evita is onstage at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for only 6 performances:
Saturday, April 30, 2016 7:30pm
Sunday, May 1, 2016 2:00pm matinée
Thursday, May 5, 2016 7:30pm
Friday, May 6, 2016 7:30pm
Saturday, May 7, 2016 7:30pm
Sunday, May 8, 2016 2:00pm matinée
Tickets are available exclusively through the Vancouver Opera Ticket Centre by calling (604) 683-0222 or booking online. Special pricing for groups of at least 10, and for families, is available by phone.
Win Tickets
I have a pair of tickets to give away to a performance of Evita on Sunday, May 1st at 2:00pm. Here’s how you can enter to win:
- Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
- Share this post on Facebook (1 entry)
- Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
Follow Vancouver Opera on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more information. I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Sunday, April 24, 2016. Tickets are non-refundable; cannot be exchanged for another performance.
Update The winner is Michelle Mollinga!
The BC Sports Hall of Fame is celebrating its 50th anniversary and in the 50 days leading up to its annual Banquet of Champions, presented by Canadian Direct Insurance on Thursday, June 9th, they’re pinpointing the Top 50 Golden Moments in BC Sports History.
Top 50 Golden Moments in BC Sports History
Sports fans from across British Columbia nominated 212 different events that were considered by sport historians, media and honoured members of the BC Sports Hall of Fame in the process of selecting the Top 50 Golden Moments in BC Sports History.
Among the treasured memories are 14 seeded moments that will receive byes into the second round of voting:
- The 1954 Miracle Mile at Empire Stadium
- Sidney Crosby’s Golden Goal at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics
- Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope
- Percy Williams‘ 100m Olympic final in 1928
- Nancy Greene’s giant slalom gold medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics
- Rick Hansen’s 40,000km Man in Motion World Tour
- Vancouver Whitecaps 1979 NASL Soccer Bowl championship
- Steve Nash’s NBA back-to-back MVP seasons (2004-05 and 2005-06)
- Vancouver Millionaires win BC’s first Stanley Cup championship in 1915
- Karen Magnussen’s 1973 women’s world figure skating championship
- Vancouver Canucks Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals
- Lui Passaglia’s game-winning field goal for the BC Lions in the 1994 Grey Cup
- Canadian Women’s Soccer Bronze at London 2012 Summer Olympics
- Larry Walker’s 1997 NL MVP award
Remaining 36
The remaining 36 moments were seeded as part of a public draw at the Hall. A list of the full 50 moments that are being ranked is available online, here they are in chronological order:
1908 – The New Westminster Salmonbellies win BC’s first national lacrosse title, out- scoring the Montreal Shamrocks 12-7 in the two-game total-point Minto Cup series.
1908 – Victoria’s Robert Powell reaches the semifinals at Wimbledon, unmatched by any Canadian male in singles until Milos Raonic in 2014.
1910 – Bob Brown arrives in Vancouver in 1910, purchases the Vancouver Beavers baseball team to keep them and professional baseball in Vancouver, then quickly establishes himself as the key builder in BC baseball over the next four decades, elevating Vancouver in particular on the North American baseball map.
1925 – The Western Canada Hockey League’s Victoria Cougars defeat the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens in four games to capture the best-of-five Stanley Cup Final for BC’s second, and to date, last Stanley Cup win.
1930 – UBC’s women’s basketball team representing the ‘West’ at the Women’s World Games in Prague, Czechoslovakia defeats France 18-14 in front of 10,000 spectators to claim the world title, the earliest won by a BC women’s team in any sport.
1933 – Vancouver boxer Jimmy McLarnin wins the world welterweight championship in Los Angeles, knocking out Young Corbett III in the first round.
1938 – The Vancouver Asahi baseball team win three championships in 1938—Burrard, Commercial, and Pacific Northwest—ranking as one of BC’s most popular teams and a beacon of inspiration for BC’s Japanese-Canadian community.
1950-1958 – The Vancouver Eilers Jewellers Senior ‘A’ women’s basketball team wins nine consecutive senior Canadian national basketball titles in one of the great BC team dynasties of any sport in any era.
1953 – Vancouver’s Doug Hepburn hoists a three-lift total weight of 1030-lbs to win the world heavyweight weightlifting championship in Stockholm, Sweden and earn the title of ‘world’s strongest man.’
1955 – The Penticton Vees, representing Canada at the world ice hockey championship in Krefeld, Germany, defeat the Soviet Union’s national team 5-0 in the tournament’s final game to reclaim world hockey supremacy for Canada, a year after the Soviet Union dished out a 7-2 humiliation.
1956 – Frank Read’s UBC-VRC rowing crews again did Canada proud winning two Olympic medals in Melbourne, Australia. Canada’s Fours crew, consisting of UBC students Don Arnold, Lorne Loomer, Archie McKinnon, and Walter d’Hondt, won Canada’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in rowing.
1961 – Backstopped by the stellar play of goaltender Seth Martin, the Trail Smoke Eaters representing Canada defeat the Soviet Union’s national team 5-1 in their final tournament game to clinch the world ice hockey championship in Geneva, Switzerland with an unbeaten 6-0-1 record.
1964 – North Vancouver’s Harry Jerome recovers from a ruptured thigh muscle to win an improbable 100m bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.
1964 – Paired together just weeks before the Olympics in Tokyo, UBC rowers George Hungerford and Roger Jackson win pairs rowing gold in one of the more unlikely Olympic victories in Canadian sport history having never rowed together previously.
1964 – The BC Lions win their first-ever Grey Cup championship defeating the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 34-24 at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium, much to the delight of football-mad BC. The victory avenged the Lions’ 1963 Grey Cup loss to Hamilton a year earlier.
1966 – West Vancouver’s ‘Mighty Mouse’ Elaine Tanner wins a record seven Commonwealth Games swimming medals (four gold, three silver) in Kingston, Jamaica at just 15 years of age.
1966 – The BC Rugby Union representative side defeats the British Lions (a representative side featuring the best players from England, Scotland, Wales, and both Irelands) 8-3 in 1966 at Empire Stadium.
1967 – At age 14, Haney high school high jumping phenom Debbie Brill invents the ‘Brill Bend’ high jumping technique that helps revolutionize the sport around the world and shocks seasoned high jumping coaches and observers that an athlete so young could develop such a radically new technique.
1980-86 – Under the coaching of Ken Shields, the University of Victoria Vikes win a CIS- record seven consecutive national basketball championships from 1980-86 and made the CIAU finals in nine of Shields last eleven years at UVic—one of the great runs in Canadian university basketball history.
1984 – Jockey Chris Loseth rides eight winning horses on a ten-event card at Vancouver’s Exhibition Park (today Hastings Park) in front of 4398 hardy souls on a very blustery and rainy night on April 19, 1984 to etch his name in the Guinness Book of World Records for most wins on a single racing card.
1989 – Whistler skier Rob Boyd becomes the first Canadian male racer to win a World Cup downhill in his home country, winning in his hometown in 1989.
1992 – Victoria’s Silken Laumann overcomes a devastating leg injury and five subsequent operations suffered only ten weeks prior to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona to capture a bronze medal in single sculls rowing. Many consider it one of the greatest comebacks in all of sport.
1992 – 2010 – Cranbrook’s smooth-skating Scott Niedermayer wins every major North American and international hockey championship available to him and remains the only player in hockey history to accomplish this remarkable feat.
1994 – BC golfers Dave Barr, Rick Gibson, and Ray Stewart lead Canada to a historic 1994 Dunhill Cup win in Scotland.
1996 – Shouldering the pressure of high expectations, Vancouver rowers Kathleen Heddle and Marnie McBean win gold in double sculls and bronze in quadruple sculls at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta to become the most decorated Canadian Olympians in history to that point.
1997 – Driving for the Player’s Forsythe Racing Team on the CART/PPG Indy Car World Series racing circuit, Maple Ridge’s Greg Moore at age 22 becomes one of the youngest winners in North American open-wheel racing history by taking the checkered flag at the Milwaukee Mile holding off Michael Andretti by less than a second.
2000 – Two BC-based curling rinks—Kelley Law’s Richmond Winter Club curling rink and Greg McAulay Royal City Curling Club rink out of New Westminster—win the women’s and men’s world curling championships on the same day in Glasgow, Scotland.
2000 – Victoria’s Simon Whitfield rebounds from a crash on the bike portion of the first- ever Olympic triathlon with a blistering finishing kick to pass all competitors and win the sport’s inaugural Olympic gold medal in Sydney, Australia.
2008 – The daughter of Vietnamese refugees who built a new life in small-town Hazelton, BC, Carol Huynh (appropriately pronounced “win”) wins an emotional Olympic gold medal in women’s 48-kg freestyle wrestling at the Beijing Olympics.
2010 – Rosemere, Quebec’s Alexandre Bilodeau wins gold in moguls skiing at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games to become the first Canadian athlete to win Olympic gold on home soil after Canada was shut out for gold while hosting both the 1976 and 1988 Olympics.
2010 – West Vancouver’s Maëlle Ricker wins Olympic snowboard cross gold on Cypress Mountain—just twenty minutes from where she grew up—to become the first Canadian woman to win Olympic gold on home snow.
2010 – Devastated over the sudden loss of her mother two days before the women’s Olympic figure skating competition began at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum, Canada’s Joannie Rochette summons remarkable courage, strength, and composure to win an emotional Olympic bronze medal, Canada’s first in women’s figure skating in over twenty years.
2010 – Already Canada’s most decorated Winter Paralympian of all time going into the 2010 Paralympics, North Vancouver’s Lauren Woolstencroft wins a remarkable five gold medals, tying a Winter Paralympic record.
2010-11 – The Vancouver Canucks’ Henrik and Daniel Sedin win back-to-back NHL scoring titles in 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively, the first and second Canucks to ever win this award.
2012 – Mission’s Brent Hayden caps one of the great swimming careers in BC history by winning a bronze medal in the 100m freestyle at the 2012 Olympics in London.
2014 – Fort St. John’s Denny Morrison wins the 1000m speed skating silver medal at the Sochi Olympics to complete one of the most heartwarming stories in recent Olympic history.
Public Voting
Check in through six rounds of public voting:
Round 1 (18 match-ups): April 21 – May 5
Round 2 (16 match-ups): May 7 – May 12
Round 3 (8 match-ups): May 14 – May 19
Quarterfinal (4 match-ups): May 21 – May 26
Semi-final (2 match-ups): May 28 – June 2
Final: June 4 – June 8, 2016
Banquet of Champions
The “Final Four” will be celebrated at the Banquet of Champions on June 9th. This year’s class, which will be formally inducted at the Banquet of Champions at the Vancouver Convention Centre, includes BC sports icons like Wally Buono, Steve Nash, Geri Donnelly and Carl Valentine.
Follow the BC Sports Hall of Fame on Facebook and Twitter for more information – and be sure to get your early bird tickets for the Banquet of Champions to be a part of celebrating sport history in BC.
Miss604 is the proud social media sponsor of the 50th Banquet of Champions
Voting is now open for the Connecting the Community Award, the “Peoples’ Choice” component of the YWCA Women of Distinction Awards that also allows nominees to give back $10,000 to YWCA programs, thanks to Scotiabank.
All YWCA Women of Distinction nominees are eligible to win the Connecting the Community Award, which raises vital funds for women and children across Metro Vancouver.
How the Connecting the Community award works:
Each Women of Distinction nominee chooses a YWCA cause that is important to her for a chance to donate $10,000, courtesy of Scotiabank, to the cause of her choice.
Eligible YWCA causes include:
- Supporting quality early learning and child care
- Reducing child poverty
- Providing safe and affordable housing for single mothers and their children
- Creating healthy choices for youth
- Preventing violence against women
Each nominee shares her cause and why it is important to her, through social media. The public votes online and the nominee with the most votes receives the Connecting the Community Award. Scotiabank then donates $10,000 to her chosen YWCA cause on the night of the Awards!
You can vote once a day, and be sure to follow all steps to make your vote count. I am honoured to be among 86 outstanding women in Metro Vancouver have been nominated, recognized for their contributions to their workplace, industry, and community.
My Cause as a Nominee
I chose to support Healthy Choices for Youth since I benefitted from so many organized programs when I was young and without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. From school athletics and mentorship, to summer camp and community clubs. I also found an interest in building websites when I was 17, which led to my current career in online media.
YWCA programs and services for youth include:
- After-school Youth Education programs
- High School Mentorship program
- Indigenous Mentorship program
- Employment programs and services for youth job seekers
- Support for young people leaving foster care
- Youth Advisory Committee
Click here to Vote for Rebecca Bollwitt »
Follow the YWCA of Vancouver on Facebook and Twitter for more information along with the YWCA Women of Distinction Awards @YWVanWODA on Twitter.
Miss604 is a proud sponsor of the YWCA Women of Distinction Awards
YWCA Metro Vancouver is dedicated to achieving women’s equality. Their mission is to touch lives and build better futures for women and their families through advocacy and integrated services that foster economic independence, wellness and equal opportunities.
The legendary Army and Navy Shoe Sale starts April 27, 2016 at all locations across BC and Alberta.
Now in its 67th year, the shoe sale is known for its unparalleled selection of luxury names. This year’s collection aims to excite anyone from weekend fashionistas to dedicated label hunters. From sky-high stilettos to pared down flats, everything is name brand and it’s all under $50.
“In addition to designer names like Nine West, Betsey Johnson, Tory Burch, Steve Madden, there are many more that we cannot even mention! And of course every pair is under $50!”, says Jacqui Cohen, Army & Navy President & CEO.
Shoe Sale Tips
I interviewed a Junior Buyer about the sale a few years ago. Her tips were to wear flip flops if you’re going on Day One, so you can just slip them off and try on pair after pair.
Another great tip is to 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. That way you don’t have people grabbing from your stash… yes the competition is fierce!
If you can’t line up to crash the door on April 27th, not to worry. They refresh the shelves with stock throughout the day and while the entire sale lasts so you won’t miss out on some of the best picks.
1960s. Archives# CVA 780-768.
Sneak peeks will be popping up on Facebook and Instagram leading up to the event. Doors open at 8:00am sharp at all five locations, including Vancouver (Gastown), Langley, New Westminster, Calgary and the newly revamped Edmonton-Whyte Ave store. You can also enter to win VIP access for you and three friends, plus a $250 gift card.
Army and Navy is Canada’s Original Discount Department Store, which has been proudly serving its communities for 97 years. This family company is 100% Canadian owned and operated, with a strong legacy in Vancouver’s historic Gastown neighbourhood.
