Literary: Award Winner Haley is a Renaissance New Media Artist

Stimulating and directing cultural fulmination is as natural to Heather Haley as manipulating media. She is an innovative programmer with a history of staunch commitment to the arts community and cultural awareness. 

With a strongly held conviction that artists, especially poets, needed to be represented on the World Wide Web, she founded The Edgewise Café in 1994, one of Canada's first electronic literary magazines, along with the non-profit arts organization, the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre. 

The EEC facilitated the Vancouver Videopoem Festival and Telepoetics, a videoconferenced reading series founded by Merilene Murphy. The Edgewise ElectroLit Centre's populist mandate and innovative programs effectively made poetry accessible to all and assisted Canadian artists in expanding both their audience and potential. 

Since 2004, Haley has been the host and curator of the Visible Verse Festival, North America's sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant poetry film and video. www.heatherhaley.com 

Haley and several other local literary figures of note will be honored at a ceremony on August 24, 2012, at CBC Studio 700. She then takes the stage the following day at Trout Lake with almost 90 other writers and performers for the Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival. 

 As one might expect, putting on a big event with 3 stages, a children's area, a market place and 90+ performers is a lot of work, so the more help the festival can have the better. Volunteers are needed. It’s a great way to meet people and learn more about event planning and Vancouver's vibrant writing community. Those interested can sign up on The website at www.summerdreamsfest.com. For more information about the festival, including complete directions and line up, check out our website: www.summerdreamsfest.com or email srduncan@shaw.ca or call 604-788-8340

A head count of businesses on Commercial Drive

Came across this interesting little article from The Republic of East Vancouver's Kevin Potvin about the make-up of Commercial Drive's Businesses. I was rather surprised at how one's perception of what businesses populate the Drive, might not be factual.

He writes:

"The local small independent businesses in a community give a uniquely accurate and sometimes surprising description of the people who live in the surrounding neighbourhood.

Commercial Drive, for example, is world famous for its cafés, of which there are 21 between “The Cut” at 7th Avenue at the north and Venables Street at the south. But there are 23 hair and beauty salons in the same strip. Don’t worry. In 1940, there were 20 cafes and 24 hair and beauty salons up and down Commercial Drive, and in every decade in between, the numbers vary by no more than five either way.

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Garden Tours Happening Today

These tours of private gardens are sure to give you ideas and inspiration

Steve Whysall, Vancouver Sun

Published: Friday, June 15, 2007

If you haven't done one yet, how about going on a private garden tour this weekend or next? June is the perfect month to visit gardens when roses and clematis and many of the best perennials are in full flower.

It can be fun to see how other gardeners do things. And you can pick up a lot of practical ideas for your own garden.

What I like most about private garden tours is that they allow me to see how the same plant performs differently in different locations.

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Liam plays on the swing while parents Ian McSorley and Kelly Brooks and sister Hannah (right) enjoy the rest of the garden, part of the Eastside Garden Tour.

Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun

Sometimes a tree is grown as a shrub, sometimes a shrub is grown as a tree. Some plants that we are told only thrive in the shade can be found to be flourishing perfectly in full sun.

Others that you'd think would only flower in bright sun can be found blooming their heads off in dappled shade. It's a lesson in the quirkiness and diversity of horticulture.

Visiting other people's gardens is a great way to get a better understanding of how plants can be used in different locations.

And it is also amazing to see how clever and creative gardeners have been in their use of containers, growing all sorts of perennials and shrubs in combination with flowering bulbs and tender annuals: phormiums with spirea, columbines with pineapple lilies, hostas and hydrangeas.

Ten private gardens will be open Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. as part of the annual Eastside Garden Tour.

These gardens are all located within walking distance of Commercial Drive, making strolling or riding a bike viable options for getting around.

Tickets are $10 from Figaro's Garden store, 1896 Victoria Drive (604-253-1696). Proceeds from the tour go to support the "greening of public spaces."

Read the full story here...