Shoppers with paper shopping bags balancing on both arms bustled their way past a tent of people in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery asking passersby for signatures for their Sewol ferry petition, past the hat stand woman who made sure plastic covered her wares from the rain, and past people wearing bicycle helmets and chucking snowballs at one another.
Petitions and street vendors are part of the usual Robson Street scenery but an official snowball fight is not. The fight, or battle as those involved in the sport, is called yukigassen and is taken seriously enough that it has its own international federation.
Saturday was the second time the game, which began in Japan 20 years ago, had been officially played in Vancouver.
“As I found out, at first you think it’s going to be fun and then it gets competitive. You don’t want to lose,” said Nathania Lo, who is the manager of Asian Giving at the Canadian Cancer Society and also a member of 2014 championship team Snowball Patrol. “It brings back the kid in a person, too.”
Players describe it as a mixture of capture-the-flag, dodgeball, hide-and-seek and touch football (and, if you’re familiar, identical to paintball’s version of capture-the-flag but without the sharp sting of being hit).
The court, or the bare concrete of the Robson Square skating rink in this case, is divided into two sides. Each team also has defensive shelters in the form of big foam blocks to hide behind. There are three periods of three minutes each, and each team gets 45 snowballs per period. The two ways to win include capturing the flag, or pegging off all the opponents with snowballs before time runs out. There is also a list of rules — no catching snowballs in the air, for instance.
The Canadian Cancer Society did its best to recreate the square as a winter wonderland with help from a film prop company, which arranged for realistic-looking snow to fall during the afternoon award ceremonies. Team Mission of Care Angels were presented medals and other sponsor gifts from tournament emcee Jennifer Lee, who is no stranger to the stage as the first runner-up in the Miss Chinese Vancouver pageant in 2013.
It was a balmy 12 degrees Celsius outside, which meant synthetic snowballs were used instead of real snow found at the championship tournament locations. The fake snowballs felt surprisingly real, though, and were provided by a family-owned company in the states called, appropriately enough, Snowtime Anytime.
The sport is in Vancouver as an official Canadian Cancer Society fundraiser. Lo, whose job at the society is to look for ways to engage the Asian community, heard about yukigassen through a colleague, and figured it was the perfect fit. Especially since there are already society fundraisers around running, cycling and hockey.
“My portfolio is Asians, which incorporates any way you define Asian. We don’t segregate, there’s lots of non-Asians here as well,” Lo said, motioning towards the rink where the tournament was played. “Yuki is a sport from Japan and what better way to outreach into the Asian community than to bring a sport into this city and to also bring some culture into what we do.”
Both the Mission of Care Angels and Snowball Patrol will represent Vancouver at the nationals in Jasper in 2016. The Care Angels qualified by winning Saturday’s tournament while Snowball Patrol (who were runners-up this year) earned an entry after winning last year’s qualifier at Mount Seymour.
Games are usually held in the snowy outdoors, with each team having to make their own snowballs with an approved mold half an hour before a game. If the snow is too icy, then synthetic balls are used for safety purposes. Helmets are always worn, with the addition of face shields in championship games.
The winning team from the Canadian nationals advances to the international championships in Japan, but it’s a tough road to get there. Lo suspects Vancouver’s biggest competition may come from northern B.C. where a team of oil rig guys have their own outdoor yukigassen court set up in one of the player’s backyard.
“It’s a game that feels very Canadian,” said Lo. “The way it’s described on the Yuki Canada web site is ‘truly Canadian in nature.’”
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