Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Among Lions
(by John Steil and Aileen Stalker) is a handy guide to the hundreds of
works around the city, so you can plot your own chin-rubbing walking tour. Even Van-
couver International Airport is worthy of a photographic snap or two for its visual art:
between the international and US check-in desks, the hulking, magnificent bronze
Spir-
it of Haida Gwaii
by Bill Reid is the terminal's focal point and also its main meeting
spot.
Vancouver provides plenty of opportunity to meet some of the region's creative types
face to face. November's excellent weekend-long Eastside Culture Crawl (
Click here
)
is when hundreds of East Vancouver artists open their studios large and small for locals
to wander around. It's arguably the best art event in the city, and it's a firm local favor-
ite.
RIOTOUS ARTWORK
Look for the large London Drugs shop in the Woodward's (
Click here
)
building on
W Hastings St and enter the building's courtyard, carved from what was originally
the interior of one of the city's largest department stores. The space is now dom-
inated by one of Vancouver's most evocative public artworks. Measuring 15m by
9m and created by Stan Douglas, Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971is a mam-
moth black-and-white photo montage depicting a key moment in the history of
local social protest: the night when police in full riot gear broke up a pro-
marijuana smoke-in being staged in the Downtown Eastside. The action - the im-
age shows mounted police pushing against unarmed locals and miscreants being
stuffed into police wagons - soon spiraled out of control, with pitched battles and
general chaos triggering a siege-like atmosphere on the area's streets. Later, the
event became known as the 'Gastown Riot' and 'The Battle of Maple Tree Square.'
Performance Arts
Vancouver has a strong reputation for stage performance and is especially well repres-
ented in dance and live theater.
Second only to Montréal as a hotbed of contemporary Canadian dance, Vancouver is
home to dozens of professional companies. The Dance Centre (
Click here
) is the main
twinkle-toes resource in the province. Its range of activities is unparalleled in Canada,
including support for professional artists, operation of western Canada's flagship dance
facility, and presentation of a huge number of programs and events for the public.
Dance events are scheduled throughout the city, including the three-week-long Van-
