This month Susan is at the Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshop (relocated to Monterey). In early December she submits the full manuscript of Kindergarten Mafia to an editor who requested a look. And she gets on with her new life.

 

This will be a month of fresh starts and clean breaks. After my three-week getaway I will return home and almost immediately move to Whistler. It wasn’t something I planned to do but I will treat it as an adventure and go with the flow. Let’s just say that my recent Life Surprise will put me at the scene of the Sliding and Slalom events of the 2010 Olympic Games. There are worse fates.

 

I have cobbled together a primer on Vancouver and the Games. These seemingly useless details are intended to leave you with a kind of pre-Games flavour for the place. In no particular order:

 

Vancouver has been host to a variety of international events including 1976’s Habitat, the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (where I met Margaret Mead – another story, another time) and Expo ’86, the World Exposition on Transportation and Communication (I still have a beautiful screen that I was able to buy from the fair’s China Pavilion).

 

The tell-tale sign that a Vancouverite was not born and raised here: we never refer to our city as “Van”.

 

Vancouverites own umbrellas but strive to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary. We wear Gortex. (At minimum, we like to pretend this is true).

 

Vancouver is sometimes called the Amsterdam of North America. Ask your mom what that means.

 

Most Vancouverites are slightly freaked out when they visit cities that lack diversity. We have strong communities of all races, religions, backgrounds and preferences and we tend to be proud of it.

 

Toronto can claim the same ethnic diversity but we’re not on speaking terms with Toronto so we win.

 

Speaking of diversity, these days our various aboriginal peoples are called First Nations. Four First Nations will serve as co-hosts of the 2010 Games.

 

Official Olympic wear can be found for sale at The Bay department store. Avoid the sweater that features two elk across the breast. Sadly, these elk look like Dracula’s bony fingers and the overall effect is Dracula-copping-a-feel. Instead, track down the more authentic and much more appealing Cowichan sweater which, after a bit of a foofarah, can also be found for sale at The Bay.

 

The Bay (where I once worked) is among the oldest corporations in the world. It was incorporated in 1670 and is Canadian through and through…except that it is now a multi-national corporation owned by an American company.

 

In the European conquest sweepstakes, we are the newest part of the New World. A heritage building in Vancouver is about one hundred years old but they make us nervous. Most of those buildings have been torn down to make way for glass towers. (Read Douglas Coupland).

 

Our historic Euro-centric personality comes out of the earliest English and Scottish settlers who worked the land and ocean.

 

Sure, there were some Spanish explorers – ergo the Straight of Juan de Fuca off our southwest coast.

 

It is said that Simon Fraser University, which opened in 1965, was originally to be named Juan de Fuca University. T-shirts immediately went on sale, emblazoned with the nickname: Fuca U. The name was immediately changed. This may or may not be urban legend but it makes a great story.

 

Some of the transplanted settlers from the United Kingdom, my great grandfather included, became union organizers. This place is crazy with union organization.

 

While on the topic of unions, the economy of the province is built on the harvest of its resources: gold, coal, fish, timber, you name it, we got it. Or we had it.

 

The environmental organization Greenpeace was begun in Vancouver in 1971.

 

In a bid to be more environmentally-proactive the provincial government recently introduced a tax on carbon emissions. If you can explain it in ten words or less, please e-mail me.

 

The head of our provincial government is called the premier (pree-myur).

 

We have a colourful history of bouncing premiers out of office. It was a ton of fun back when I was in television and radio news. The current Premier Gordon Campbell has been elected to office three times and is considering a fourth attempt. This may make him sound like a scandal-free kind of guy but there was that rough start to 2003 (you can see his mug shot at http://dawn.thot.net/campbell_dui.html).

 

Our shame is the Downtown Eastside. As best as I can tell, activist-warriors from the far left and far right working tirelessly to create this Frankenhood.

 

British Columbians are the healthiest in Canada.

 

The healthiest British Columbians live in Richmond. Richmond, or Lulu Island, is the site of the Speed Skating Oval, an award-winning building perched on the shore of the Fraser River. Alas, Richmond is six feet below sea level and at risk of turning into a very large mud puddle with one strong earthquake.

 

Hockey is a religion here. Fans are rabid and yet it is common to see a variety of hockey jerseys at a Vancouver Canucks game. This is generally tolerated and in the case of a game between the Canucks and the Montreal Canadiens, expected.

 

We know the Canucks haven’t won a Stanley Cup but they took the New York Rangers all the way to game seven in 1994 (and we had a riot to prove it!No, seriously, a real riot.)

 

Construction of the Olympic Athlete’s Village on False Creek marked perhaps the first and last time the City of Vancouver jumped into the real estate development game without a net. Fittingly, just across from the Village is the site of Expo ’86. The sale of that property marked the first and last time the provincial government tried to get into the real estate development game without a net. Red faces, bad deals, heads lopped off and taxpayers left cleaning up the mess. Leave it to the pros, kids.

 

British Columbia is large, approximately one and a half Texases large. Population in Texas: about 24-million. Population in BC: about 4-million. Talk about wide open spaces.

 

Current favourite topics of conversation: how traffic restrictions will shut down the city during the Games and leaving town during the Games. Also, who are the fools who are still protesting the Games as though it will help the poor, the unemployed and the residents of the Downtown Eastside?

 

Next month: a random primer on Whistler.

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

As we approach the end of another year:

 

I wish you and your family a very wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice and the most extraordinarily Happy New Year!

 

In the first 365 days after its official launch November 1, 2008, Gingerheart.com generated 710 visits and more than 1,700 pages views. On average, visitors read 2.41 pages and spent 2:04 on the site. Fifty-eight percent were new visitors which means forty-two percent were return guests.

 

Thank you for stopping by.