Entries Tagged 'Vancouver' ↓

signs signs everywhere are signs-

I’ve been trying to pay attention lately to signs around me. Literally.

Bike signs, community notices, band posters. I’m kinda amazed by all the different yet simultaneous worlds taking place within the same cement infrastructure and green grass of this city. And of how many of those worlds I know little to nothing about: burlesque, body-builders, mathematicians, Green Peace, vegan chefs, food bank volunteers, dog walkers, politicians, playwrights, actors, nurses, lawn-bowlers. There are vast communities of people sharing the same bus and aspirations as me and I wouldn’t know it.

Could Sean Connery make a good’s dog name? How about Mr. Sniffs or Guacamole? (Mr. Sniffs is Jordan’s pick, Guac is mine).

Recently we had the sincere pleasure of meeting some better-named dogs, Jackson and Mason at the Vancouver Animal Control Shelter and then Timber at the West Vancouver BCSPCA.  Since then all three dogs have been adopted. We’ve been cruising the pictures on Petfinder and A Better Life Dog Rescue and stalking at the local dog park, asking owners about their pets and getting in as many back-pats as we can.

We’re on the hunt for our forever-friend. A fantastic animal-worker named Deb gave me some good advice when she saw that I was feeling a bit of despair at the search, “You’ll know. You’ll go to a shelter and you will see your dog. Your dog will find you.”

I sure as heck hope so. Because it’s like tearing a big meaty strip right off your raw heart to bring a dog back to the shelter after a little walk. And the dogs are treated with such love there. But it still hurts to leave’m in a cage. Huge merit awards to all volunteer dog walkers, fosters and care-takers! (Now if we could get this kind of compassionate programming for human beings who are homeless as well!)

So, we haven’t found our “sean connery” yet but here’s a little picture of what we’re looking for:

haha-kidding, we could never take him to the dog park!

Here’s some pictures from our forever-friend hunt so far:

Jordan and Jackson walking out of the Vancouver Animal Control Shelter for a little stroll

We stopped to play with his chewy toy (really Jackson was walking me, so when he stopped I did too!)

But oh my gosh how I loved to get his affection. He was such a cuddlebag!

And a very handsome athletic dog. I bet his new owners take him for long hikes.

Mason was so quiet in his kennel and when we got him outside he was super happy and curious to see everything.

He wasn't too interested in treats though.

But he sure was interested in making friends with other dogs.

Then Timber! How could you not love this guy?!

We accidentally took him on a walk by a duck pond where no dogs were allowed. He threw off his senior-tude and got a bit sprightly around the ducks!

Timber knew where to go

Remember that movie with Frankie Avalon and original Mouseketeer Annette Funicello? Beach Party? Frankie got to surf (and was known as) the Big Kahuna. Whether my memory is making a mess out of the 1963 flick or not, I seem to remember the surfers were always on the look out for a huge wave; certain that this wave would be the one to make them a local legend and get their girlfriends’ wandering eyes back to adoring only them. Not to mention make’m kings at the local beach bonfire where everyone wiggles their bikini bottoms.

The Rock Out With Your Socks Out Sock Hop + Art Auction is Jordan and I’s Big Kahuna. We are hoping this soiree will make fundraising legend within our own smaller sized blanket weave of the year We Raised $13 000 for The Arthritis Society.

It is no longer the Year We Will Run a Marathon or the Year We Eloped in a Foreign Country or The Year We Danced to Queen and The Doobie Brothers for Cheap Entertainment. Nope.  It won’t even be The Year We Took a Ferry Ride to Turkey, or The Year we Adopted a Forever-Friend. No, this will be the year We Raised $13 000. It’s a feat. And we’ve been slapping our boards on waves big and small, so far raising a couple of hundred dollars at a time bringing us to 43% of $13 000. (Which is pretty darn-tootin amazing when we look at where we started from -0%!).

But the glitch and there’s always at least one, is we need to raise 75% of our goal by July 1st so we can stay a bit longer overseas after the marathon and take that boat ride to Turkey and make that wedding ceremony on November 4th. If we raise the 75% we don’t get penalized for lengthening our plane ticket (for free!) to squeeze in an extra week or two after the race. That’s $4056 bucks we need to raise in just a few weeks. So this is the time for the miracle worker, the bikini bottom shaking extravaganza, or the Big Kahuna.

And we’re hoping that Rock Out With Your Socks Out will be just the bonfire we’re looking for. (We’re also having a bake sale and bottle drive this month too).

If you’re in Vancouver and want to come the sock hop + art auction, we’d love to have ya! (And if you would just like to donate to the cause, you can do so online here).

And oh gosh, ignoramus confession time: The term ‘Big Kahuna’ is sort of like Coca Cola saying you can open happiness. “Kahuna”  is actually a word meaning “priest, magician, minister, wizard, expert in any field”, (not a huge wave you can surf). Also according to wikipedia pro surfers such as Duke Kahanamoku, have resisted the word’s pop culture lure out of respect for its original meaning. Hmm.

So, in our next big wave of fundraising, Jordan and I are looking for our “humpback“. (According to Wiktionary under Glossary of Surfing this is a big wave that is more like two waves. It’s also called “double-up”. And we sure hope this fundraiser does exactly that. Cowabunga!

Big Wave Surfing

I have not gone without food for longer than six hours in my entire life. Most would argue that means I have never gone hungry. And they’d be right.

My multiple six-hour stints without food include trying to do the 30 hour famine two years in a row in high school, attempting spiritual fasts, health cleanses and a sympathetic hunger strike. At about hour 6, my urge to eat outweighs any principle I’m striving to live by. I cave. I eat. And I’m amazed that any human being who is hungry for any length of time could think about anything other than food.

And it’s estimated that over a billion people do.  That’s how many people are regularly hungry in the world.

It’s the Vancouver Food bank’s Hunger Awareness Day today (and running until June 11th). Here in the Lower Mainland, the food bank feeds/supplements/aids up to 25 000 people a week. And that’s without any government assistance. But it is with a lot of help. Namely from you and people like you who volunteer, donate resources, food, their time and money. And according to Kraft Canada, they will match your donation dollar-for-dollar (up to $150 000) until June 11th. So, if you’ve got five bucks to spare this is the week to donate it. Ten dollars can get a lot of fresh produce.

It’s amazing how many restaurants, community gardens and centres, grocery stores and people give food to the Food Bank.  They’re all onto something. Maybe It’s the first step to bringing humanity back. Sharing something to eat.

In a surprise turn of fund-raising events, bake sales have been out-cashing bowling parties, community dance troop shenanigans and letters to potential corporate sponsors.

Our latest bake sale at 2025 West Broadway sold out! We raised $188.44 that day. Bumping us up to $5594 for The Arthritis Society so far!

So we’re coming back. With even more goodies. June 23rd at 2025 West Broadway, 8:30am-2pm. Sinful treats alongside ones that’ll make your colon sing.

We’re even thinking of having a jokes-for-free side of the table…maybe all about baked goods.

Hey what did the m&m say to the chocolate chip?

Get yr own cookie….

(I did say the jokes were for free, right?)

What Terry Fox did for Cancer research, for a nation of Canadians, for every single person ever staring down the dark, deep hole of despair is indescribable.

With one leg he ran the equivalent of a marathon  every single day of the week for 143 days straight.

Picture I took of one side of the monument of Terry Fox outside of BC Place, Vancouver.

Because of Cancer, Terry’s country-wide marathon was stopped outside of Thunder Bay. But even though Terry had to stop running, his hope ran on. And man did it run. Terry Fox’s legacy is as strong as the young man who started it all in St. John’s Newfoundland in 1980.  Here’s a newspaper article from Star reporter, Leslie Scrivener who first interviewed Terry starting out, in the article she reflects on his legacy now.

Terry Fox is Canada’s forever-hero. He’s an example of everything each of us hopes to be.  I know it is blasphemous to even think about comparing Terry Fox to anyone.

But Eva Markvoort isn’t just anyone.

Like Terry, Eva was driven. Her family supported her. She wanted to raise awareness and funds for research on a disease that kills young people. She didn’t give into despair even though her life was ending. In 1980, Terry Fox created an everlasting legacy with one, sometimes painful, footstep at a time. In 2006, Eva started her own marathon-of-hope, by blogging one post at a time what it is like to live with Cystic Fibrosis and what it is like to live.

Eva’s blog, 65 Red Roses, is such an honest and gripping account of life and death. Of Cystic Fibrosis and the hope and  awareness activism can create. In an at once heart-wrenching and ventricle-expanding post on February 11th -a little over a month and two weeks before she died- Eva says ‘my life is over but my love will go on.’ She was 25 and had lived through a double-lung transplant, was waiting for her second, had touched thousands of lives and brought the words Cystic Fibrosis into the minds of people everywhere.

Both Terry Fox and Eva Markvoort are young BC residents who left remarkable legacies behind such short, impressive lives.  And both are iconic images to me: Terry Fox hop-running with a station wagon and later a van following him down long stretches of lonely Canadian highway. Eva Markvoort’s bright red lips and hair, her passion for life all over her face and her actions.

Picture from Douglas Todd's blog post April 1st; www.vancouversun.com/thesearch

Both Terry Fox and Eva Markvoort pole-vaulted over insurmountable odds with their sheer determination and belief in life. And not to mention their indefatigable insistence that they had something to offer.

And holy crap, did they ever!

Terry Fox running a marathon a day, 7 days a week, with a prosthetic limb is unspeakably amazing. Then immediately after running an amount few of us do in a lifetime, he’d do press conferences! In his short grimy sweats, he’d stand and answer questions, visit sick kids, schools, families, stop for pictures and continue to raise media awareness (and funds- over $450-million dollars raised and counting!) for his cause.  Eva Markvoort, with a double lung transplant, documentary, numerous fundraising efforts, public speaking, working, and just like Terry, would make the time for the  press and to advocate signing up to be an organ donor and raising awareness about CF. I remember reading her blog a few months back and being struck by her constant refrain, ‘don’t focus on what you can’t do, focus on what you can do.’ She’d be reminding herself of this with barely 20% lung capacity or at a time when she had to let go of her dream job and deal with the realities of entering chronic rejection.

I vote British Columbia name March 31st -Eva Markvoort’s birthday- Eva Markvoort day.  It could be celebrated as a provincial day of activism, where every one wears red (lipstick, hair, clothes, hearts) and raises some money or awareness for Cystic Fibrosis, for Cancer Research, for Autism, for any cause that is close to their heart. The trick is, they have to do it with joy and flair. Get silly and jump around a lot. Make sure there is face painting and pictures and love.

Yes, make sure there is ‘love, love, love.’

Here’s a letter I’ve written to Premier Gordon Campbell and MP Joyce Murray. Feel free to copy and paste it and fill in your own information then mail it in.

Dear Honourable Gordon Campbell and Honourable Joyce Murray,

Re: Naming a day in honour of BC resident & activist Eva Markvoort

Eva Markvoort’s death will do nothing to diminish her legacy. One built on love, honesty, openness, passion and grit. I do not consider it far fetched to equate Eva Markvoort to another hero every Canadian holds close in their heart: Terry Fox. Eva’s selfless and determined activism to raise awareness about Cystic Fibrosis and Organ Donation is on par with Terry Fox’s indefatigable perseverance to promote awareness for Cancer Research. Both were young BC residents who created an amazing legacy out of their lives. Lives most of us could never imagine living.

Eva Markvoort’s spirit, her sound commitment and passion are life altering to behold. You can’t read Eva’s Live Journal blog 65 red roses and not be changed. You can’t hear about Terry Fox’s life and understand the scope of his Marathon of Hope and not be changed either.

Honourable Joyce Murray both nominated Eva Markvoort for the Queen’s Jubilee award and marked her passing in the House of Commons. In her short life, Eva also won the 2010 Summerhayes award for her work on behalf of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, received her Bachelor’s Degree and starred in the award-winning documentary 65_RedRoses. She touched thousands upon thousands of lives in both her blog and the documentary. And made a significant difference in the increase of organ donors and people’s awareness of Cystic Fibrosis.

I propose a provincial day of activism in honour of Eva Markvoort. Whether that is a day off work or just recognized.

I feel as a current resident of British Columbia that Eva’s reach extends well beyond our province and that it would be an incredible move of validation to mark this young’s woman’s short and impressive life with a day, her birthday March 31st. A time for all of us to reflect on what matters most- something she lived every single day of her short life doing.

It would also serve to shed more light on Cystic Fibrosis and other terminal illnesses young people succumb to in this province and country. Eva never gave up and in turn, let’s make sure generations to come are introduced to her beautiful, bright lips and the message they so passionately spread: love, love, love.

Eva Markvoort is a striking role model on so many levels. Even her bright red hair is fun.  When she was restricted to a wheelchair, she made sure it was red and dressed up like another BC hero, Rick Hansen. Eva made something out of everything. She is truly an inspiration.

Also an Eva Markvoort Day could serve to honour her incredible family and friends and the legions of loyal fans who have supported her. Her death is everyone’s loss. A day to celebrate her life, joy and activism would be an honourable way to recognize that.

Thank you so much for your time and I sincerely hope this can move forward. If there is anything else I can do to help move this forward, please let me know at the address at the start of this letter.

With respect,

Sincerely,

Laurie Dawson

Jordan and I were elated to run the 2010 Vancouver Sun Run. Actually, we were elated after we ran the 2010 Vancouver Sun Run. Beforehand our bodies and minds were more like pointy butterfly wings jabbing our insides with excited uncertainty.

We had never run farther than 55 minutes and during our last regular run, I barely coughed up 45 minutes of running. I was begging Jordan to tell me the time on the stop watch he was holding from 35 minutes-on while going up a long, slow hill with a few of my old crampy friends back for business (Namely, ‘The ribber” mixed with ‘The bitch”).  We also weren’t sure what to expect this being our first race ever and our first time running alongside thousands of other people. 51 419 in fact.

So here’s a little photo montage of our day. We didn’t get any pictures of the finish line! We were too exhaus-er-exalted!

Our next race: The Vancouver Half -Marathon on June 27th. You can find out why we’re running here.

Thanks to everyone involved who made The Sun Run possible, from the volunteers to staff to people cheering from the curb!  It was an incredible experience!

I was thrilled Jordan and I could join Compassion for Animal’s worldwide project: The Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale as a part of our Arthritis Society fundraising.

Now, I’m not going to lie, ok, I’ll lie a little, I didn’t think I’d be able to bake anything that could even remotely be considered delicious without eggs or butter or Betty Crocker. And even if some talented vegan bakers could, I had a niggly vague sense I probably wouldn’t be able to. It’s that sort of underlying mundane terror that can crop up any time in life – ‘what if I can’t figure out how to put the bus ticket into the machine?!!’ Which, when roughly translated means: ‘everyone dies, but I’m still afraid to. Oh, god just let me put the damn ticket into the machine.’ So, when I put on my makeshift hairnet and rallied up some new ingredients, my wooden spoon was shaking. Yeah sure, I was afraid of death, but worse- I was afraid of death from embarrassment… what if I didn’t have the vegan baking gene? What if I sullied the name of the Worldwide Vegan Bakesale and of one of my favourite veggie places to eat in the whole wide city? What if my spoon served to confirm the stereotype carnivore’s everywhere say when vegan baking comes up, “that’s an oxymoron, right?” Or “disgusting, I’d rather eat sawdust sprinkled with brains.”

But I committed to this fundraiser, dang it, and Sejuiced called me back and said they’d love to support both causes and I could set up in front of their store. And here’s nothing but the truth: getting that call from Sejuiced was like someone telling me my first story was getting published, I was elated. I jumped up and down. This was real help from the community. And not to mention from a legit, healthy, feel-good place. I pushed the mundane terror back behind the eggs in the fridge, picked up the tofu instead and got to baking.

These chocolate chips are delicious! I'm still eating them!

We went to a new grocery store called Greens on the corner of West Broadway and Maple - they were super friendly and had the stuff we were looking for.

I used -with some minor adaptations- recipes from three Vegan Cookbooks: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World; The Garden of Vegan and Vegan Vittles. The pages now look like 18th Century treasure maps due to all the oil and flour and maple syrup I accidentally spilled on'em.

The baking started to pile up once I got the hang of it and ps, it's actually pretty easy to bake vegan.

Here’s some cover shots of the cookbooks that proved to not only be useful but late night friends too:

And speaking of friends, it felt like we were hanging out on Sesame Street setting up shop on West 4th avenue. People were so friendly! Our first customer of the day told us we made her day as she bit into one of my-first-time-ever-made-vegan-brownies and said “delicious”. I started breathing again. If it wouldn’t have been weird I would have hugged her for at least three seconds.

I got to thinking, if we could impress these healthy shiny people on West 4th, then maybe we could keep having some bakesales for The Arthritis Society. And heck, maybe even throw in some raw-food desserts sometime. We got to chat with one young woman who makes raw food desserts regularly. I told her I felt like Sly Stallone in Rocky 5 over the brownies, and that I would have no idea what superhero I would feel like over a successful raw food dessert bonanza… John McClane? Yippee-ki-yay…

We got to talk about the Arthritis Society, the upcoming marathon, and the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale to moms, kids, dads, dogs, shoppers, runners, bikers, people on dates, people who work in the area and the fabulous people who work at Sejuiced. We raised $96.50 too!  That pulled us up an entire percentage point towards our goal of nabbing $13 000, we’re resting at 41% of that so far ($5300!)

Jordan and I are running 55 minutes at a time now! (Which in our lifetime I think will be the only meaning behind the phrase “freedom 55″  yeouch economy + no pensions & benefits! We’d better keep running for as long as we can to stay healthy so we can work till we’re 90 and have a great death at 91!)

(This is one of the reasons I love running, if I run long enough, I don’t think thoughts like that so better tie up my shoelaces, but first I’ll finish this blog post…)

We kick off our first race ever -a 10km run- this weekend at the Vancouver Sun Run. I think I might barf because I’m pretty excited. I have never run with thousands of people before. Last year 55 858 runners crossed the finish line. I wonder if it’ll be a transcendent experience? A spiritual whiff of sweat, brawn and spandex? Or if it’ll feel claustrophobic- like trying to compete in the long jump in an elevator. Either way, I’m excited just to experience it. I hope to run with my camera and avoid any accidental elbows to the throat (I’m pretty short). Also two of our Arthritis Society heroes we’re running for are Jordan’s step-mom (and my future mother-in-law) Sherrill Hemsley and Joan Goodmanson, my second mom growing up. So, it’s fitting we’re doing our first race on Mother’s Day!

I never thought I could run in a race. I never thought I could vegan bake either. It’s weird.  How things can change when you stop thinking you can’t and you just do it. (Oh no, now I’m onto Nike. How many more digressional things and parenthesis can I fit into one small post about running? Life insurance, TV commercials, a Nike slogan, in-laws, vegan cupcakes, the Long Jump, elbows to the throat?)

But maybe in some strange way these things can sum up the Vancouver Sun Run.

I don’t know but I’m going to find out.

It’s T-minus 21 hours until our next Arthritis Society fundraiser and this one is even sketchier turn-out-wise. We don’t  have the White Stripes behind us, but we do have Commodore Lanes & Billiards and while it may not be rock n roll, it’s bowling. Which is really a lot like rocknroll but with bigger balls.

——

I have to come clean the above paragraph was a draft of a post written the day before our Chuck the Stapler and pick up a ball fundraiser which was an Office Space & Big Lebowski dress up party (is someone going to catch on that we’re having way too much fun coming up with fundraisers?) And while it was sketchy turn-out wise (about 15 people showed out of 42) the people that came made it one heck of a good time.  A few even dressed up. And all beat their case of the Monday’s with a cold beer and a few 5-pin strikes.

In reality, we raised $3 that day. But we put the whole $300 in. The thing was, people were really stoked and want to help us do the next one and the next one after that, so really that 3 bucks does feel like 300 when you’ve got those kinda dressed-up-awesome people helping you out.

Flare and all.

This was our top prize

Not only was it won, but the person who won it then wore it and bowled a strike, that's the "wild" in wild side!

Thank you!