Fascinating labour history walking tour today in downtown Vancouver and DTES. I thought I knew something of labour history in Vancouver having read plenty — but there’s so much more to learn and discover! What a radical history it is! My knowledge is quite patchy it turns out, but handily the tour was also a tad patchy on the particular time period and events of April 23, 1935 which we explored recently in Rereading the Riot Act, so was able to challenge and enhance that bit.
It is something of a disgrace that the City did not mark the contribution of The Mothers Council of Vancouver in 1935 today, within its Vancouver 125 celebrations. Left wing women’s history in the city during the 1930’s remains lightly documented rather than comprehensively. Irene Howard’s excellent essay The Mother’s Council of Vancouver: Holding the Fort for the Unemployed, 1935-1938 on the topic is vital reading.
Working Class and Labour History Walking Tour
For those interested tomorrow (Sunday) there is a Working Class and Labour History Walking Tour taking place as part of La Commune de Vancouver.
Join SFU Instructor John-Henry Harter and others for PART I of this walking tour of the city’s working past.
Meet at 2pm outside Burrard Skytrain Station. The event is due to last til 4pm, dress appropriately to our variable weather of late.
This event is part of a series:
La Commune de Vancouver
Paris 1871/Vancouver 2011
March 18-May 28
FOR MORE INFORMATION, GO TO:
www.sfu.ca/history/commune
I had not long made a pot of one of my tea-blends experiments (today’s was named grotty weather Saturday blend: i scoop of Lea Valley tinned orange pekoe with one scoop of Lady Earl Grey from Steeps) when lo agus behold the most astonishing weather event unfolded.
I would term it a hail-rain-rain-hail event or even a Hail Our Rain moment. It arrived with the strangest ongoing rumbling throughout. Ever curious about the varieties in rain (I’ve convened with a lifetime of it and yes there is much variation in it) I took myself out during the preliminary hail stage. Three of my neighbours were transfixed watching it descend and bounce off the branches and ground, then the father arrived and they all departed under cover of brollies. The line of umbrellas were visible just above the front hedge as they trekked off.
Meanwhile behind the tree, a vicious bouldering action was happening with the clouds in a South West direction.
I ran out into the hailing rain and yep they stung on landing. Ran back in. Then spectated it from different windows and angles and then when I ventured out to pick up a book, the opera continued, with a strange pattern of repetition. The speed would increase and an extended period of hail would follow, then cease and back to rain.
It was extensive, it was indeed an opera of a weather event. The sound was incredible.
Parataxis thank you
Thank you to everyone who joined us last Sunday afternoon for the Parataxis event exploring Helen Potrebenko’s novel Taxi! in today’s city and interfacing the book with what was and what is. Thank you especially to the members of the public who “read shotgun” (open the book randomly and read passages) and to Helen who planned the route and talked to readers as we wandered. We were also blessed to have the collaboration, performance and generous support of Lori W (Mme Beespeaker) who concurrently documented the event at her blog.
I had a strange crisis before embarking on the event, which has given way to new/re-imaginings and invited input (some helpful, some less so). I set out perhaps to ask a few questions, one certainly was who authors remembering? Another was: what am I prepared to do for this book? I did not factor that one needs “permission” to revisit repeatedly. I had not considered that a repeated revisit might invite an assumptive yawn. But then it’s always easier for people to yawn, dismiss than engage.
The actual experience of repeatedly visiting a text like Taxi! (through different interventions) is quite the contrary. Each time we engage with this book it delivers new delights, reflections and questions, not least because of its fragmentary form. Again, a reflection of the working day, the working shift, the working life and this particular city, where the tea does not sit inside the pot for long.
The 11 people who joined us last Sunday engaged with the text in such a committed, enthusiastic and detailed manner which resulted in whole new considerations, especially about the present day.
I have decided this year to plant a square foot garden. So far I have only managed to plant 1 single square foot due to the impatience of my gardening companion and inability to remember the number of the padlock on the garden shed.
Today I snuck into the garden hopeful of Lord knows what to discover the general area of the community garden is water logged! Managed to pull some of the more determined and embedded weeds amid the strawberry plant and noted an increase in the slug populous.
This is either my fourth or fifth year in that garden and this year my soil is actually looking a rich, dark colour with a plethora of worms twisting through it. This is major progress after gardening in dry and belligerent clay and the debris of a fish and chips shop for the past whatever number of seasons.
My closest and trusted gardening expert Mme Beespeaker has advised that the May weekend around Victoria Day is a perfect time to plant a garden and recover from pondering the depressive news of the election outcome.
Have just sourced the origin of the music I am using for my floor routine at the impending Adult Gymnastics Meet. It is from a film with a completely psychotic looking horse in it. Am never going to live this down, when my males get their eyes on it.
Shameful. Still could not bring myself to embrace the Mask of Zorro theme music. And the choices are limited when it’s 1 minute long and a sport populated largely by 9 year olds.
Glutei
Your glutus maximus is, surprisingly, relaxed when you are standing. However, when rising from sitting or stooped position it is engaged. There’s a cross stitch arrangement of nerves in this area of the body I had not accounted for.
The S.I joint remains for me the dodgy hinge on a cupboard, that threatens to drop the door onto your forehead someday if you’re unlucky. The pesky might of mechanics within these parts!