Wordless Wednesday

Aboard the St. Roch--the Vancouver Maritime Museum was free for Canada Day.

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Vancouver Farmers Markets Turn 20!

Did you know that it's been 20 years since the first farmers market in Vancouver? Here are some fun facts about the market for you:

1. East Vancouver Farmers Market opened July 29, 1995. That day, 500 eager Vancouverites descended upon 8 skeptical farmers in the parking lot of Croatian Cultural Centre. They sold out within a couple of hours.
2. The second week of East Vancouver Farmers Market, there were twice as many farmers & 800-1200 people were attending on a weekly basis. The market ran for 11 weeks and generated almost $40,000 in sales.
3. Now the VFM operates 9 weekly markets & hosts 425,000 people annually.
4. VFM supports 250 small BC producers & helps keep over 6,000 acres of farmland in production. 
5. Each year, VFM contributes more than $15 million in direct & indirect benefits to the local & regional economy.

To celebrate the anniversary, the Vancouver Farmers Markets will be partying the whole season. You can join in the fun too! 

• VFM will be hosting a series of 20th Anniversary events, contests, limited edition merch, & festivities.
• Have some sweet birthday treats with VFM on opening day at all of  the markets.
• Enter their #VFM20 photo contest on Instagram for a chance to win $100 in Market Money!
• Take a walk down memory lane with Moments in History panels at the markets, & follow VFM's #tbt & Founding Vendor profiles on Facebook.
• VFM is launching an exclusive collection of 20th Anniversary Market Merchandise, including t-shirts, tote bags, & a limited edition 20th Anniversary $5 Market Money Token!

Vancouver Farmers Markets officially open for the seaason this week, starting with Yaletown May 7, Trout Lake on May 9, Kitsilano May 10, most of the rest starting in June. 

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Richmond Maritime Festival is coming: August 9-11

Though I generally tend to write about what's going on in my neighbourhood, or at least within the City of Vancouver, I recently heard about a neat festival that's happening in Richmond: the 10th annual Maritime Festival. It takes place at the Britannia Heritage Shipyards Nation Historic Site from August 9 –11, 2013, 11:00am to 6:00pm.

St. George Creek

Cars rush over the asphalt, drivers pushing the pedal
down to get through the amber.
Oblivious to the buried waterway below
strata of pavement
packed gravel
sand
then peaty dark soil
sliced through with a corrugated steel culvert
that contains a tiny stream.
Children cross another artery
bright backpacks clashing with the fluorescent vest & stop sign of the crossing guard
pouring into the gravel school yard
contained too by metal, but this time permeable chain link.
The water flows under them
then a few streets downhill,
beyond laundromats & past bathtubs stacked in the yard of Andrew Sheret Ltd.
the stream gains speed in its dark confines
below the traffic circles.
Even before the stream was buried under progress
before cars
before asphalt,
before crosswalks,
before chain link,
the people who harvested its salmon
left it unnamed.
But not forgotten.

Krista the stonemason, who set each stone & piece of scrap plumbing
to create a mosaic in the centre of the intersection at 10th Avenue,
remembers;
The designers of the blue-dominated street mural painted along the patchwork pavement
between 6th & 7th Avenues
& the dozens of people who painted it on the asphalt one sunny July day
remember;
Greta, sharing maps, books & local history on a walking tour,
remembers;
& I, leaning into my turn as I bike down St. George, turning onto 6th
briefly catching the sound of the creek through a manhole cover,
remember.




The False Creek Watershed Society & many local residents are part of a project called the St. George Rainway which aims to daylight the stream. The City of Vancouver seems interested in the idea, so maybe the stream will see the light of day again.

*I wrote this during & after a creative writing workshop, "Four Ways to Write Your Neighbourhood" at the Vancouver Public Library. Kudos to Sierra for letting me know about it.

Walking tour of St. George Creek

Stream of Dreams at Florence Nightingale Elementary

Last weekend we went on a walking tour in our neighbourhood: St. George’s Street Rainway – bringing a creek back to a city street, part of a series put together by the False Creek Watershed Society. Led by Greta Borick Cunningham, a keen naturalist who is very interested in the local ecosystems. With a recent BCIT diploma in Sustainable Resource Management under her belt, being part of the Rainway group, the Chair of the False Creek Watershed Society & living on St. George Street, she was the perfect leader for this walk.

About 15-20 of us met in Robson Park by the Storyteller's Cob Bench that sits outside the Mount Pleasant Family Centre. From there, we walked north along St. George as Greta described where the creek went & what the plans are for the daylighting: bringing the creek back to life.

At 12th Avenue, we took a look at the community garden in the grounds of Florence Nightingale Elementary. The fencing around the school yard is decorated with what's become a familiar sight in Vancouver: brightly coloured wooden cutouts of salmon. Called the Stream of Dreams, the vibrant fish were painted by the students of Nightingale, part of a much larger watershed education program through community art. A sign near the fish reminds us that all drains lead to fish habitat. 

Stopping just past Broadway for more information

At 10th Avenue, we stopped for a moment to talk about the two projects there: the St. George Lending Library & the stonework mosaic in the centre of 'Gather Round', Vancouver's smallest park. If you're interested in more details, I blogged about both of these projects here on The Sprog, in Mount Pleasant Pride.



At 7th and St. George got a close look at the new mural, created by the St. George Street Rainway group to bring awareness about the proposed daylighting of St. George Creek. Generally murals are on walls--I believe that's the origin of the name--but this one is painted down the middle of the road, directly on the asphalt.

The St. George mural features the word water in the many languages of the people who worked on the project. There is a special emphasis on Halkomelem, the language of the original people of Vancouver. The mural features several mandalas nestled among the flowing blue & green fish, rain drops & other shapes. Each of the larger mandalas features a design based on the life cycle of the salmon that once would have populated St. George Creek. I won't show you any photos of it--go see it yourself! It's on St. George, between 7th & 8th Avenue.

Our next stop was a second stonework public art project created by Krista Morrison, who did the mosaic at 10th Avenue. The sinuous pathway of stones & recycled concrete pieces reference where the original route of the stream might have been, with the standing stones representing the water bursting up from the ground.

Hidden under the heavy iron cover is a creek.

When we got down to 6th Avenue, we all stepped into the traffic circle to listen to the creek sluicing though the culvert below the manhole cover. The water is only audible up at street level when it gets going on the downhill of this buried waterway.

People involved with the planning process of the creek daylighting project say that the city is very eager to follow through on this project. The plans to restore this stream bringing it back up to the surface next to the sidewalk along St. George street are pretty exciting. It will never again be the natural little salmon stream that it once was, but getting it out of the culvert & bringing it back to life with native plantings & hopefully wildlife someday will be a great improvement over a lonely dead little stream in a dark culvert under the street.

If you'd like to get involved or hear more about the project, take a look at the Facebook page of the St. George Blueway (it's alternately called Rainway, Greenway & Blueway) or join the Facebook group.

Exercise Challenge: Month 2, Day 6... & pics from the Fraserhood walking tour

A greenified lane near Fraser & 27th Ave.

Started the week off right with a 20 minute brisk walk (to the meeting point for a local history walk, but that was at such a slow pace it didn't count as aerobic exercise) then 20 minutes of riding on a grocery run. It's easy to get outside & exercise on a day like this. :)

Week total, one day in: 40 minutes.

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What is this Exercise Challenge, you ask? Read my post on Day One for details & how you can get involved too.

One of quite a few murals in the Fraserhood.

Our last stop at Fraser & Kingsway.