Archive for February, 2011

I should probably preface this review of John Furlong’s book by noting that since 2009 I’ve been repeating and proliferating the following mantra:

I’ve said it on TV and in radio interviews, tweeted it, posted it on this blog multiple times and as the sentiment has been reposted through social media by literally hundreds of people I’d like to think that it’s not only caught on, but that’s it’s something that people agree with. It’s not saying I don’t love what the Games brought here, in fact I have a personal history working with the Olympics on the fringes, co-curating an art show called Lightning Bolts for Nike during the Beijing Olympics, helping to introduce the sport and culture of BMX to the Summer Games as it made it’s debut there in 2008. I can say with all of my heart that I appreciate and support the Olympic movement, warts and all, and that it was and is my intention with this mantra to mount a preemptive (now postemptive, if that’s a word) strike on the massive Olympic hangover that was predicted for our city (which, go figure, has yet to materialize). What I mean by it is that we must never lose sight of the fact that while for most the Games were an absolutely incredible experience which we as Canadians might never match in our lifetime, the magic and the beauty of this amazing place where we all choose to live is what brought them here in the first place. Had I been privy to the inner workings of the Games ahead of time I might have written in there somewhere that John Furlong and his team practically killed themselves to bring them here, and that by their very design they were meant to unite a country as it had never been united before but I didn’t have a grasp on that before I read this book. And even if I did, it just wouldn’t have had the same ring to it, you know?

John Furlong has been living and working in British Columbia since 1974, longer than I’ve been alive. An Irishman who emigrated to Canada early in his career, he worked on the Northern Games, the BC Games and then the Canada Games, and you now know him as the most prominent member of the organizing committee who brought us the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. He was the face, and the CEO, of VANOC.

The story that John tells in Patriot Hearts, while offering intimate details on the dealings behind the scenes of the Games, is a deeply personal one. With the help of award winning writer, Gary Mason, he brings us inside the original bid for Vancouver to host the Winter Olympics whose idea was sparked 14 years ago and was then relayed through a decade and a half by John, his good friend Jack Poole and their team all the way to ignition in that cauldron in Coal Harbour. And while it’s the “the story of how they did it” (“they” being the original team who secured the Games with John and then VANOC which produced them with him at the helm) perhaps what I like the most about Patriot Hearts is that it reads as a memoir and tells how John did it, and how he made it through.

The book speaks of John’s early life in Ireland and his coming to Canada, how he was once a competitive athlete himself, how he worked his way up over the years, how he flew literally 2,000,000 kilometres while securing the bid, how he handled the pressures of the media, friends deaths, being the one everybody blamed whenever things went awry, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili’s tragic death, how he managed teams and aligned strategic partnerships and most of all how he believed in the power of sport to change this country for the better. As well he comes with a candidacy you might not think he would; from his previously unspoken problems with politicians “politicking” to the more public issues involving Chris Shaw and the British press, he pulls no punches. He talks about his struggle with the French language and the hell he caught for it, about exactly how the Bay took out Roots as a sponsor and similarly how CTV took out CBC as a broadcast partner all the while noting that “The Olympics have their flaws and have sometimes been dogged by scandal, this we know. But at the core is something good, with the potential to be life changing, something with the power to unite a nation as it had ours. You can’t say that about a lot of things today”.

After making my way through Patriot Hearts over the past couple of weeks, opening it up exactly one year after the Games started and turning the last page almost 17 days later, I can honestly say that there’s no better way to relive the Games than by reading about them from a different perspective while having some of the brightest (and the not-so-brightest) moments of them expanded on and sometimes even walked through in these pages. We can gather in the streets dressed in red to play street hockey in “Relive It” celebrations year after year (I did just that this year and I will do it again next year and the next!) but nothing will ever come close to repeating those magical days in 2010, and none will ever come as close to the experience as the CEO of VANOC did.

Thank you, Mr Furlong, for your incredible work in bringing the Olympics to Vancouver, and for sharing your experiences in this book with us. But don’t ever forget…

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!).

Sometimes in life it is hard not to root for the underdog. You know – David vs. Goliath, the Common Citizen vs. Unpaid Parking Tickets, Breakfast Cereal vs. Bacon. Or the guy running down the alley after the tow-truck vs. the tow-truck. I could go on and on, but I digress.

What I’m trying to get at though, is that people appreciate a fighter; someone (or something) who, while facing seemingly insurmountable odds, never stops believing in their ability to prevail. I get that feeling from these snowy daffodils, the protagonist of Nest and Sparkle‘s photograph below.

Hang in there, little Narcissus. Spring will be here soon.

Gary

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #150

Location: Lucy’s on Main || Found: Sunday night (Feb 27th).

Woah, what a busy week, day, life. Crazy! After quite a day of production, I went by to the good ol’dinner place around the ‘hood to fulfill strangering and food needs. The moment I walked in, I saw a familiar face, a lovely stranger from the past who immediately shouted “hello stranger! how are you doing tonight?!”. If I was almost a walking zombie, this made me smile. He immediately followed with “you know what? You should talk to this stranger right here!”, as he pointed to a guy sitting right at the bar. I turned to him and immediately repeated the chant: “Oh hi stranger, how are you doing?” The new stranger followed on with the conversation and then I told him about the whole deal. He was right into it and showed me several tattoos he had, from a classic japanese mask to the name of his son, all really awesome. “But I already know which one I’ll pick to share”, he said. He rolled his sleeve and showed me his sailor tattoos. “It is not finished yet, but there’s a bit of a story to it…”.

“I grew up on boats, and been around boats my entire life, and I even almost died on one. But I’m still very attached to them and water, regardless of that experience. What happened was that quite a few years ago I was out by the beach with whom is now my ex-wife, for some reason [note: I think he mentioned there was a kid left by himself on the beach] I ventured by myself into the ocean. It was this old 1957 boat that my grandfather had bought, ironically I had I named it ‘Baby Bitch’ (like the Ween song) ‘cos I knew one day it would… anyways; the thing is I was going far into the ocean, full throttle, and in those boats you had to be standing to steer it, because you wouldn’t be able to see if you sat down, so I was standing and somehow I managed to get thrown off the boat! I just fell right into the water.

So you had me there in the water, floating in the middle of the ocean and with the boat going in circles around me. I had to swim back into the boat, which was terrifying because like I told you, it was still going and the motor was so close to me in the water. But I managed to get back on it and control it. Then on the way back, one of the boat’s patches, that I had put myself, blew and we started getting water. Anyways long story short, we ended up being rescued by a film crew boat that was passing by, and Sean Penn happened to be in it. So there you have it, a near-death experience and a super-star encounter. Then I got the tattoo, I had always wanted it, but I guess I got my sailing wings through that experience, haha…”

I later asked why would the boat had gone in circles when he was in the water, he told me that that’s something the old boats used to do as soon as you let go of the steering wheel. Pretty crazy. He then let me take the shot. He was a really cool guy. He typed down the blog address on his phone, and then I proceeded to sit on one of those mini booths, and have dinner. On my way out I thanked them both: the new stranger and the not-so-stranger anymore, who then gave me a hug. I kinda get a hug every time I’m around now. Very cool people! And definitely, today’s story and happenings made my night. :)

Thank you strangers!

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

The Vancouver Book Club is V.I.A.’s contribution to the vibrant literary scene in Vancouver. Each season we recommend one book that concerns this city (written by a local author or not), we give our members a couple of months to read it and then we put on a FREE event where the author sits down for an intimate chat with our members moderated by our book club president, Lizzy Karp.

Tonight we are very excited to meet with Michael Christie to discuss his book, The Beggar’s Garden, which I’ve been raving about for weeks (as has the Straight and the Sun). Join us at the Waldorf at 7! Like I said, the event is FREE as is joining our book club. See you tonight!

Michael reading from The Beggar’s Garden at his book release party at Ardea Books last month

Nicholson Road is part of an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Vancouver Is Awesome will be featuring one of the latest, most engaging photos from the project in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the city of Vancouver. Metro Vancouver Is Awesome, and you should get out and explore it!

If you’ve ever ridden the Expo Line between Royal Oak and Edmonds, and like me, can’t keep your eyes in the book or paper you’re reading, you’ve probably seen this week’s spot. It’s the backlot for a certain locally-filmed tv series. I’ll give you a hint – it’s a sci-fi show.

Doesn’t narrow it down enough for you eh? What if I said it was a _____ duper show? Set in Metro_____. I might even say it has a very “Littletown” vibe to it.

Yeah, so it’s the urban set for the city of Metropolis, in Smallville. And I don’t know about you, but I find it interesting that it’s located so close to the Skytrain – It gives us a neat little peak into an industry that’s usually quite closed-off, but I’d think trains buzzing past every couple minutes would be a distraction. Maybe they’re just as intrigued by us as we are of them?

To make the photo a little more interesting, there’s also a hint of the Tuesday blizzard over Anmore and Port Moody. Blue sky and pink, cloudy sunset here; snow falling there. Just another Spwrinter day in Metro Vancouver.

More from Nicholson Road can be found HERE.

Our friends at Geist Magazine just released Geist 78, the collector’s edition and they’ve allowed us to share this piece from it with you to give you a taste. It’s called Shots Fired and it was written by Stephen Osborne, editor-in-chief of Geist. It’s a dispatch on the soul of a city, and it’s an inside peek at what you’ll find in the latest issue of this great magazine published out of Vancouver. If you think it’s as great as we do consider a subscription.

Shots Fired
Stephen Osborne
What makes a real city real?

photo: victory square by steve dynie

On the after noon of September 11, 2004, in a Lebanese café on Hastings Street near Victory Square in Vancouver, a heavy-set older man in a wind­breaker and base ball cap who had been chat ting quietly with the proprietor began to speak up in a remarkable gravelly voice on the subject of what was wrong with this city; or, to put it another way, he said to the proprietor in measured tones, I can tell you what this city needs, what this town doesn’t have nearly enough of, he said, is more shots fired. He paused with these words and it was clear now that he was addressing not only the proprietor, an amiable man in an embroidered flat-topped cap who was standing behind the counter, but every one in the café, young women and men sit ting alone or in pairs at tiny tables and along the tiny counter, students from the down town university campus and the film school at the end of the block, with their books and magazines and hushed conversations, all of whom ceased talking or read­ing or staring out the window to look over at the proprietor and the gravelly-voiced man in the wind breaker, who seemed, to me at least, to be an unlikely connoisseur of baba ghanouj, tab bouleh, hummus or the falafel wrapped in pita that lay on the plate before him; he held a folded news paper in his hand as if it were a pointer or a wand; he was forceful but not unfriendly; in fact he was smiling. The proprietor remained attentive but …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. With ALMOST 25,000 artists, boasting 112,500+ tracks, the CBC Radio 3 web site is the absolute ultimate authority, and the home, of independent music in Canada. With that massive library along with tools for members (free to join!), we’re taking advantage of what they’ve set up by bringing you a fresh batch of music every week featuring local groups who have tracks (entire albums, even!) on the R3 site.

You may have heard already (I’m bad with secrets) but this is my official announcement!:

VIAindie is going on tour!

That’s right, I’m taking this show on the road and tagging along across Canada with Treelines. We won’t be alone, friend of VIA, The Mountains & The Trees (from NFLD) is coming too, to create the aptly named Lessons In Geography tour. So, needless to say, I’m excited.

I’m going to be making tour diary posts (photos and videos) from the road so you can see where we go and what we get up to. We also created a website with show dates (so invite your friends in other cities to the shows!) and the official tour blog…

In honor of this I (with the help of both bands) have created and all Vancouver-indie Roadtrip Playlist. Click the images below to hear it!

$2 Tuesdays are back?  Did we ever have $2 Tuesdays?  Well…they got ‘em up in Norburn.  This nicely compliments my DVD rental program.  I saw The Kings Speech last week, it was excellent, it even gave me the strength to just say ‘No’ to toonie Tuesday at KFC, which just happens to be on the next block.  Not an easy task.  I can’t be certain the price tag will last forever, which may not be a bad thing, anyone want to take bets on me seeing Gnomeo and Juliet this Tuesday?  In 2-D too….$2 Tuesdays have changed the game….

Dolphin Cinema