By Haley Cameron Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball   Mary Bennett has always been an artist. These days the longtime Kitsilano resident– “Kit-sil-eye-no,” she laughs, emphasizing the original pronunciation– incorporates collage and acrylics to produce two dimensional mixed-media canvases. Her favourite theme right now? Birds’ nests. But if you ask Bennett, her primary creative outlet is not painting.   “Creating a sense of community is my true art,” says the middle aged woman, who is retired from her executive role on the Canadian Unitarian Council, but just getting started on a career close to her heart. Bennett is quick to explain that community building has been a personal priority for as long as she can remember. A self-proclaimed Community Engagement Leader, Bennett can trace this passion back to her childhood.   “When I was in grade 5 I organized a birthday for my teacher,” shares Bennett, with a smile that reveals just a touch of her 10-year-old self’s pride. Fast forward a few decades and she’s still organizing gatherings as the Celebration Planner & Housewarming Coordinator at Kits House.   Bennett, a North Vancouver native, has known that she belongs in Kitsilano since she first planted herself on West 4th to sell tie dyed scarves in her twenties. “Kitsilano was all hippies then,” she laughs, not denying the classification altogether. The job sparked a lifelong love affair with the Westside neighborhood that has ultimately led Bennett to her latest role in the local neighborhood house.   Bennett studied Art Education, through a program that included studio training, before taking more of a Human Resources route with her career. Her corporate background is in team building and communications, but it wasn’t until she joined the Vancouver Arts Council that she realized how complementary these two avenues could...

By Katja De Bock   If you are a regular reader of Kerrisdale Playbook Magazine, you will have noticed the beautiful photos of our interviewees, capturing the essence of their personalities with just a short click of the lens. You might be surprised to it’s an emerging photographer, Vancouver-based Noriko Nasu-Tidball, who made the professional photos.   In my experience as a producer and interviewer of television magazines, the videographers dominate the set. They have to set up their gear of tripods, lamps and cables in what is usually a very short time. However, for the nervous interviewer and self-conscious interviewee, that time seemingly takes forever. Moreover, the videographer often interrupts the flow of the interview as the subjects move in and out of focus, or when camera cards are full or batteries empty.   Not so when I am working as a writer with Noriko Nasu-Tidball as my photographer colleague. When my editor-in-chief, Keiko Honda, and I are speaking with the interviewee, Noriko has the astonishing ability to become what they call a “fly-on-the-wall.” You don’t hear her, you don’t see her, and yet she manages to make hundreds of photos per session, of which only a handful will be selected for the magazine.   For most of the interviews in Kerrisdale Playbook, Noriko relies on ambient light (daylight) and does not ask the subjects to pose, as she wants to capture the gist of the moment. An exception is a group portrait at the end of the interview.   Noriko says her love for vérité-documentary style of photography began during her childhood. She grew up in Susami, a small town in the Wakayama prefecture (administrative district) in Japan, as a daughter to a banker and a kimono storeowner. Magazines were always around...

  By Katja De Bock Photos: Courtesy of Shannon Selin   When Shannon Selin’s father took his daughter to the site of Napoleon’s 1815 surrender in Waterloo, Belgium, little did he know the trip would eventually result in a remarkable novel about the defeated emperor.   After three years of research and writing, Shannon Selin presented her novel Napoleon in America on April 6 in Marpole’s Historic Joy Kogawa house, with the renowned Japanese-Canadian author present at the launch party.   Incidentally, Selin lives only three houses away from the Joy Kogawa House, where Kogawa lived as a child. The historic residential building now houses a writer-in-residence program.   “The spirit of writing emanates from having Joy Kogawa so close – it just washes down the street,” Selin says of her prominent neighbour.   As you may remember from history class, Napoleon never made it to America, but died in exile at the age of 51 on St. Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic. But Selin, who was interested in the state of mind of the man who had achieved so much, yet was confined to a small island, chose his last months at St. Helena as the starting point for her book. The literary fiction genre in which historical events unfold differently than they did in real life is called “alternate history,” but Selin wasn’t aware of that when she wrote the book, at first purely for her own interest.   Selin starts the novel in February 1821. Asking “What if Napoleon escaped and made it to America?” she sets in motion a series of astonishing and amusing events. Shrewdly, she places Napoleon’s arrival in New Orleans on May 5, 1821, the official day of his death in real life, thus enabling the emperor...

By Dave Wheaton Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball These days, it’s not hard to feel like the world has become a touch impersonal. Online shopping is becoming more popular, most of us buy our groceries in big department stores, and, often times, we don’t really know where our food is coming from. The Bakeshop at 4021 MacDonald street is a family owned and operated store that brings some personality back into our lives. It’s not every day that you find a bakery like this, where the people who sell you your baked goods are the same people who make them. Family togetherness is one of the defining features of The Bakeshop. Mike and Meg are as close as a brother and sister can be, and together they own and operate the store with their mother, Donna Nelson. Although it’s only been a year, there’s a rhythm to The Bakeshop that could only be possible though the kind of family relationships that are brought to the kitchen. As we talk in the kitchen of The Bakeshop the three of them take turns explaining what it is that makes The Bakeshop such a unique place. For them, going into business as a family felt like the natural thing to do. They tell the story like this: Mike: Right out of high-school Megan enrolled in the baking and pastry arts program. And so she had a wedding cake business for around ten years. It got to the point where she either needed to expand or quit Meg: I also needed a location to work out of. We were working with a caterer over in New Westminster and it was just so far from all the wedding venues in the city Mike: A month before we bought the bakery Megan...

By Dave Wheaton Photos: Noriko Naru-Tidball   In Oru Restaurant one Tuesday afternoon we met with superstar architect Gregory Henriquez, managing partner of Henriquez Partners Architects.  As one of Vancouver’s most influential community figures, Gregory has received wide recognition for designing Woodward’s redevelopment in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. Today, Gregory and his architectural firm are working on several projects to promote community, social justice, and sustainability across Vancouver. As if that wasn’t enough, Gregory’s buildings are designed to have a distinct style and are some of the most recognizable pieces of Vancouver. As expected, Gregory keeps busy.   “We’re doing all sorts of things – everything from Oakridge, which is very large, to little projects like the York Theater on commercial drive, where we’ve brought an old theater back to life. We’re turning a prison into social housing over on Main Street, and creating the first immigrant services building in North America which is going to integrate temporary housing with non-profits to help immigrants from other countries, which is exciting. We’re doing our first project in the Middle-East. We’re doing a myriad of different re-zonings around town – most of which are for complex mixed-use. We’re redoing a church into rental and social housing. It’s an amazing project. So we’re pretty busy.”   But despite these staggering contributions to Vancouver, Henriquez Partners Architects is a relatively small team. They employ only 51 people while most competing firms are multi-nationals that employ thousands. Gregory’s architectural style is famous for incorporating an ethical component to the buildings he and his team design.  “Each project is about finding the soft spot and the thing that is required in order for a community or an issue or an idea to be brought to light”, Gregory explains, his inspiration...

 By Katja De Bock Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball   When you hear her warm, soft voice speak in a confident tone, you wouldn’t guess the woman behind the mike describes herself as shy and suffering from anxiety and depression.   Sara Troy, who grew up in England, lived in South-Africa and travelled intensely before settling down in B.C. some 34 years ago, had to overcome asthma, chronic pain and fatigue from fibromyalgia, as well as a divorce before discovering what she truly loves – helping others gain self-esteem through radio.   “I am an abundant woman,” says Troy, and what she means is how her life was enriched by her predicament, but also by her talent to listen to the need of others – sharpened through years of work as a spiritual counselor.   “I feel the pain in life, the pain from others and how to take it on,” she says. “I can empower others to find their own solutions.” And if anyone asks how to do that, Troy has a witty reply: “Instead of saying ‘There’s an app for that, I say, there’s a show for that.’ ”   The show, that’s Ask Sara, a half-hour online radio show about issues such as hope, fear, regrets, or what makes a woman. The content is largely improvised in the studio. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do until I turn the mike on,” Troy says. “It’s whatever comes at that time.”   The show airs live Mondays, with repeats on Wednesdays and Fridays at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Positive Living Vibration (PVL) Radio, the internet radio station she started in April 2013 with her producing partner Bill Mackie. They produce and broadcast from their Pitt Meadows home.   All shows, including those by...

 By Haley Cameron Photos by Rosanna Goncalves   When Debbra Mikaelsen, Editor-in-Chief of Edible Vancouver, was nominated for Best Local Advocate in B.C.’s first annual We Love Local awards last summer, she immediately requested the nomination credit the magazine instead. It’s this exact sort of humility that stands out when I sit down with her and husband/Publisher, Philip Solman, to learn more about the publication they’ve raised as their child over the past six years.   In the end Edible Vancouver was credited – and as winner of the category no less. Phil explains that their mission is ultimately to connect people who eat with people who produce and distribute food locally. While admittedly proud of the Best Local Advocate title, the approachable couple behind Edible Vancouver’s success avoids most public recognition. “We’re just not that interesting,” quips Debbra, as her partner explains that they’ve always wanted the brand to stand on its own. “We tend to shy away from the spotlight. We decided early on that there wouldn’t be any faces in the magazine,” he explains, and flipping through the beautiful Almost Spring 2014 issue I realize Debbra’s Editor’s Note is void of the expected headshot. “It’s not the Phil and Debbra show,” she says. But the pair agreed to share their own story in hopes of expanding knowledge of their product; one which has already achieved incredible growth since its 2007 naissance.   When the couple decided years ago that they wanted to work together, neither one was aware of the Edible Communities association that publishes numerous North American titles under the same ‘shop local, eat organic’ premise. Phil had been working with a non-profit society, We Are What We Do, when he was first exposed to the franchise. Through his non-profit...

By Katja De Bock   When Karen Lam walks by the Louisa Apartments on Kerrisdale’s East Boulevard, she laughs out loud remembering how she once almost set the building on fire trying to cook a meal. A highly educated Asian-Canadian from Manitoba with degrees in English literature and law, Lam never learned how to cook until she moved into her first Vancouver flat near Arbutus and West 41st Ave. That’s twenty years ago now and Lam has moved on to become an incessant cook, passionate tuque-knitter and oh, one of the world’s few female horror film directors. Her second feature, Evangeline, about an abused college student seeking to avenge her perpetrators, will open the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival(VIWIFF) on March 6. In 1993, Lam needed an inexpensive flat providing easy access to UBC. Kerrisdale was offered no distractions for the avid student. Squabbles with elderly neighbours about the central thermostat in the cellar of the apartment building were a daily routine.   Who knows if murder was on her mind in that dark Kerrisdale cellar, but creepy cellar-like torture chambers with devilish spirits are abundant in Evangeline, which was partly shot at UBC. The campus eerily made headlines for unsolved sexual assaults, which happened throughout 2013. The supernatural revenge fantasy deals with freshman Evangeline (Kat de Lieva), who is missing after hanging out with an enigmatic, violent fraternity leader (Richard Harmon) and his pals. Beaten and left for dead in the woods, Evangeline finds herself trapped in a supernatural nightmare, and starts a violent quest to avenge her perpetrators. In spite of a brutal storyline and mesmerizing visual effects, the film is not mere entertainment for the bloodthirsty. It asks the question whether it is better to turn the other cheek or...

By Dave Wheaton Photos by Noriko Nasu-Tidball   It’s sexy, fun, intelligent, and provocative. The RezErect exhibition at Bill Reid Gallery of North-West Coast Art is an exploration into erotica, something we tend to forget when thinking about Indigenous culture. But what does it take to make an exhibit like this possible? Beth Walters has been on the Board of the Bill Reid Gallery of North-West Coast Art since its beginning. She suggested we meet at the gallery on Hornby Street to experience it firsthand. We’re thrilled that we did. “This is an unusual gallery” – Beth   We start with a tour of the gallery, led by the co-curator of the current show, Kwiaahwah Jones.  RezErect is an amazing exhibit with a variety of pieces across a variety of mediums. The provocative theme of the exhibit is realized in so many ways; some artwork is funny, some is scandalous, some is empowering, and some rebellious.  Bill Reid Gallery is the first to host an exhibit of aboriginal erotica, earning the greatest response the gallery has seen. But most of the gallery’s shows are original concepts so Bill Reid Gallery is no stranger to this sort of venture. In the past, the gallery has hosted a show on Aboriginal humor and a show on textiles. Original ideas like these help Bill Reid Gallery stand out and appeal to all audiences. Emphasizing these unexplored aspects of coastal First Nations’ culture has defined Bill Reid Gallery as a cultural authority here in Vancouver. “Exhibitions such as this are like stories”, says Beth, “They open your mind and your heart to new ideas”.   While discussing Vancouver’s Bill Reid Gallery with Beth we also met the Executive Director of the gallery, Mike Robinson, who explained a little...

“A Sense of Place in History” An Interview with Brian Robertson Interview  by Espen Fikseaunet* Photos by Noriko Nasu-Tidball *Studying social anthropology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim and currently enrolled in the First Nation Studies at UBC   In the southernmost part of Dunbar, not too far from the Musqueam reserve, I meet with Brian Robertson. At the sound of the doorbell I open the door to find a very tall, middle aged man, dressed in semi-formal attire. Nothing about his style reveals the fact that he’s an artist –  nor, for that matter, do we have any telltale clues that he’s a historian and scientist. He reveals all that later on. As we exchange polite greetings the discussion soon moves on to Norway, the country where I’m from, and one of many countries that Brian has visited. Already he’s beginning to talk about some of his experiences and opinions, so we decide to move to the table where the conversation can be recorded. With maple tea and dark chocolate in front of us, we launch into the first question. – What led you into music? “Well, it’s one of those situations where I’ve kind of evolved into being a musician and a singer/songwriter. Playing music, much less creating and performing it, was not something I started until well into my life.” Brian goes on to explain how he loved dancing as a child, and how that prepared him for his musical endeavors later in life. Eventually he picked up the guitar and started singing in his late twenties. His main genre is Folk Music, possibly as a result of the strong tendency towards Folk in the 60s and 70s when he first started out as an artist. Some years after...

“Becoming Art” An Interview with BRF by Raffi Wineburg Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball 1. Pioneer “Part of what makes him so special is that he is doing something that no one has considered art before.” -Melissa Mann With short blond hair, bulging muscle, and Clooney-esque laugh lines etched into an otherwise youthful, clean-shaven baby-face, Brent Ray Fraser looks like an Aryan superhero. In reality, Brent is a multidisciplinary erotic performance artist. But he doesn’t like labels. Few labels, if any, do him justice. “I don’t even like to be called and artist,” he said. “Art is just what I do.” There is no one who “does” art in the same way as Brent. The first such example is Ecdysiart: for these live shows, Brent simultaneously paints and strips naked—a literal and metaphorical take on art as an act of self exposure. At the end of an Ecdysiart performance Brent often creates “[object] D’art.” where he imprints his body part onto a canvas (“like a self-portrait of arousal”). Brent has also pioneered an art form called “[object] paintings” where he uses his body part as a brush to create portraits or landscapes. Brent’s art is truly unique and regarded as such: He has performed (not always naked) in hundreds of venues and garnered international acclaim for his works and performance pieces. His art is both experimental and boundary pushing. It forces us to reexamine what we believe art is. It challenges us to recognize the human body as an object of art. And it dares us to celebrate sexuality in new, provocative ways. “When you take away things that push the envelope, then we will just crumble,” said Brent. “Sexuality is something that is swept under the rug, but if you take that away we will...

Kerrisdale Community Centre board member Bill Harris is the race manager of the Grandragons. Story and photos by Katja De Bock Across the street from Kerrisdale Community Centre, Ron and Betty MacDonald are preparing several times a week for a day on the water. The MacDonalds are cofounders of the False Creek Grandragons seniors’ dragon boat racing team and have been training and racing since 1998. Dragon boating originated in China and requires 20 paddlers, plus a drummer and a steersperson to compete in racing events such as Vancouver’s Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival. The name Grandragons was chosen because all founders of the group were grandparents. “It just kind of started as a joke, but now we’ve come so far,” said Betty MacDonald, who trains several times a week and would like to see more Kerrisdale residents join. She tried to recruit people from Kerrisdale when the team started 17 years ago, but was advised the people are too old. “Well, guess who belongs to there now,” said Betty, 78. If you are over 50, or newly retired and in good health, you can come out for training, said Tom Oliver, captain of the Grandragons, with several members aged 80 and up. “You just have to have the desire and the ability to be able to paddle, and to get in and out of the boat.” An annual fee of $350 covers coaches, boat rentals and entry fees of around seven regattas a year. Most of the athletes are competitive, which is an international trend, said Oliver. “More seniors are becoming involved in competing,” he said. “Internationally, they now have a Senior C-category for people 60 and over. They never had a category for that age group before.” Race manager Bill Harris is a non-paddler, responsible for managing challenges...

In freshly creased grey dress pants and a baby blue polo, Jason Robinson is dressed for business. If it’s true that, as Jason says, he’s in “terrible shape” then I would have liked to see him in good shape. At 43, he’s being modest. Even so, his business attire does little to hide a slightly older version of a former trained firefighter, coast guard volunteer and all around athlete. His clean-shaven face remains remarkably youthful; his black hair is neatly styled, his smile frequent, genuine. We’re doing a written story, but Jason looks ready for TV.

Interview-in-progress: Katja De Bock (reporter), Sayaka Toyoshima & Ivan Gayton By Katja De Bock Photos by Noriko Nasu-Tidball & Ivan Gayton When a Japanese midwife and a B.C. tree planter met at a compound of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) in rural Pakistan, after-work entertainment options were scarce. One thing led to another, and a few years and many projects later, Sayaka Toyoshima and Ivan Gayton are awaiting the birth of their first child in Summerland, B.C. Before heading to the Okanagan, the couple stopped by Kerrisdale Playbook headquarters and spoke with editor-in-chief Keiko Honda, photographer Noriko Nasu-Tidball and reporter Katja De Bock about what makes their work in emergency regions so irresistible. Most striking about the two is the passion for their work. Half a year ago, Toyoshima had to abandon her work as a field researcher in a convalescence nutrition study in northern Nigeria, because of increasing kidnappings in the area, due to the conflict in nearby Mali. “We believed that our area is very safe,” says Toyoshima. “Everybody knows what we are doing, we’re foreigners working in the hospital, saving many children’s lives. Many village people trusted us. The most stressful thing was to leave our field, other than the security issue.” But husband Gayton, the head of mission, made the decision to leave. “It’s my job to be the bad guy and say ‘I’m sorry, you can’t work here anymore’,” says Gayton. Toyoshima is still sad having had to leave her patients behind, most of them rural families who participated in the six-months study about the vicious cycle of child malnourishment, illness and poverty. Toyoshima’s task was to collect data in the field, which is contributing to a study that will eventually be published by MSF Holland.  MSF was founded in...

The Nectarines and Plums in Glass Bowl (Photo courtesy of Winsor Gallery) By Katja De Bock Photos by Noriko Nasu-Tidball For a few moments, Ann Goldberg forgets about her fancy, but uncomfortable high heels as she stands on a podium, presenting her paintings to an audience of over 80 art pundits. Quite an accomplishment for a woman who considers herself a hermit. Goldberg, a photo-realist painter, held a preview for her upcoming exhibition “Eden” at her Vancouver home on April 24. The artist spoke with Kerrisdale Playbook Editor-in-Chief Keiko Honda and journalistKatja De Bock about the show, which can be seen from June 13 till July 12 at Winsor Gallery on East 1st Ave. “Personally, I don’t need a lot of attention. When I have a show, I find it a bit overwhelming,” Goldberg says. “I am happiest when I am in my studio, working. In the flow, I am the happiest person in the world.” The flow is something that Goldberg can’t easily explain. It seems to be a matter of getting into a mind space of being able to focus on one activity, excluding what is going on outside, while combining the scientific and artistic parts of her brain in the act of creation. Artistic inspiration in Edmonton Goldberg was raised in Edmonton. Her father was a pharmacist, her mother a sewer. She was inspired by her grandmother, a weaver who dyed and spun her own wool, and by her mother, who would enroll her in art classes and take her to the Edmonton Art Gallery. Because her older siblings and parents frequently spent evenings away from home, Goldberg found herself often alone, with her German shepherd, listening to music and drawing a world of monsters. “I was a bit of a hermit,” she says, adding that after a degree in...

Fifty-six companies are involved in the making of my standard, late Tuesday night dinner: a can of chicken noodle soup. This almost laughably high figure is indicative of an increasing estrangement of human beings from their food. Much of what we eat is processed, treated, and injected with preservatives in some distant laboratory. It is shipped, often from thousands of miles away to the local supermarket where we, foragers of an urban landscape graze through linoleum pastures and fluorescent aisles; navigating a prepackaged terrain of endless food choices and rarely pausing in the process to wonder: where did this all come from?

Neighbourhood cafés are special. Not only because they are usually owned and managed by a local, but also because they are warm, welcoming, and friendly. In the heart of Kerrisdale, there is a place that has been refilling everyone’s cup of coffee for the last 20 years: Bean Brothers Café Bistro.

In the heart of Kerrisdale, the senior’s centre serves as a meeting place for the community, constantly filled with activity. Be it for a dance class or just conversation, locals over the age of 65 from all over the area gather in there to enjoy the company of their neighbours. It’s an open and friendly environment, the perfect place for Dr. Alex Cherkezoff to offer his expertise on the health-care system to any senior who might need a second opinion.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything

Born on February 12, 1949 in Vancouver BC, Peter Ladner is a scholar, author, journalist, environmentalist, businessman and former politician. As a former Vancouver City councilor and Metro Vancouver vice-chair, Peter ran for the 2008 Vancouver mayoral election in which he competed against Gregor Robertson, the current mayor of Vancouver.