Renfrew-Collingwood Community News

News stories from the Renfrew-Collingwood community in East Vancouver

Category Archives: Arts & Culture


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Still Creek Stories – Book launch

Still Creek Stories preorders

Preorders for the book were sold at this year’s Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival. Photo by Kaitlyn Fung

BY EMILY CHAN AND KAITLYN FUNG

Over the past three years, Still Moon Arts Society has been producing a book to share memories about our beloved local Still Creek, which runs through the heart of the Renfrew Ravine. Artistic director Carmen Rosen started the project to chronicle the amazing stories of our neighbourhood and, together with her team, has gathered numerous stories from residents of various ages, experiences, cultures and length of time living in Renfrew-Collingwood.

From childhood memories in the ravine to the celebrated return of the salmon to our waterways, the book will feature the many experiences of art, nature, stewardship and more from Still Creek, as well as the community that has made it blossom. The stories have now been curated into a book that can be enjoyed by families, children, elders and everyone in between.

A preview of Still Creek Stories. Cover design by January Wolodarsky

A preview of Still Creek Stories. Cover design by January Wolodarsky Cover design by January Wolodarsky

Everyone involved in the project was so proud to take preorders for the book at this year’s Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival in September. After the years of story collection, it is an honour to share the incredible stories about Still Creek and Renfrew Ravine, some of which were previously forgotten, unheard or lost, and others that had yet to be discovered.

The book will be launched in January 2017. If you are interested in learning more about the project and preordering Still Creek Stories, you can visit squareup.com/store/still-moon-arts-society.

This project has been the culmination of many peoples’ hard work, thoughtful comments and heartfelt commitments to making these stories heard. It also could not have happened without access to the beautiful, rugged, loved, exquisite piece of nature that is Still Creek.

A big note of appreciation to everyone that has loved and protected the creek, therefore allowing this project to come to life.

Copyright (c) 2016 Renfrew-Collingwood Community News


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Reflecting on five years of salmon returning to Still Creek

Still Creek photo with salmon and ducks

Still Creek at Natal Street and Cornett Road where chum salmon have appeared for the past four years. Photo by Kaitlyn Fung

BY CRECIEN BENCIO FOR STILL MOON ARTS SOCIETY

In the first week of November 2016, my neighbours and I are waiting. At Still Creek by Natal Street and Cornett Road, we step off the sidewalk and dodge the blackberry fronds. We are close enough that our fingers touch the water. Our eyes are alert for a flicker of a fin or a ripple.

For five years now this has been our ritual. This would be the fifth year salmon are to return to Still Creek in Vancouver. Still Creek is part of the Brunette River Watershed and is one of the major tributaries that feeds Burnaby Lake. The creek is partially hidden in culverts until it reaches Burnaby, where it flows above ground until it empties into Burnaby Lake. Chum salmon hadn’t made their way through these industrialized areas for 80 years until 2012.

I can feel the water seeping in through my shoes, but I am excited. This moment is part of the narrative our childhood – our environmental restoration efforts, the trees that we planted in the Renfrew Ravine now as big as we are, the silly garbage that we pulled out.

Personally, the salmon is a symbol of my own process of learning. This year, I have been more mindful of indigenous food sovereignty and the land that we are on. This journey has been confrontational and difficult. Through this, I learned how salmon is beyond species – it is linked to cultural knowledge systems, health, ecosystems, relationships and resiliency.

The salmon is a small wonder in my community. It surprises me how much I have learned from their returning presence. It surprises me how the many relationships I treasure revolve around their annual return. This year as I make my trek to the creek with friends I think, have the salmon heard our songs? Have they heard our dreams? For the past five years, this is where we have waited.

Still Moon Arts Society acknowledges that we are on the unceded, occupied, and traditional lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sto’lo  nations, and for this we are thankful. Through creating art, restoring environment, and building community, Still Moon commits to  facilitating spaces for understanding and for knowledge sharing. This work will acknowledge and respect the contexts of the past and the present.

How can neighbours help the salmon and contribute to a thriving ecosystem in Renfrew-Ravine?

  • Do not use harmful chemicals, fertilizers, and pesticides.
  • Dispose of garbage, chemicals, paints and other liquids properly. Do not dump chemicals down the storm drain.
  • Wash your car without soap or with phosphate-free soap.
  • Participate in Evergreen’s Uncover Your Creeks program to take action to improve the health of Renfrew Ravine. For more information, visit evergreen.ca

Copyright (c) 2016 Renfrew-Collingwood Community News


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Dedicated chef of Morning Star breakfast program honoured with national award

BY DR. RICHARD BERWICK

The early morning crew is ready to spring into action. Photo by Richard Berwick

The early morning crew is ready to spring into action. Photos by Richard Berwick

It’s tough to find cooks with engaging personalities and Canada-wide reputations, working hard hours at community venues like Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH). We have one at the Collingwood Saturday Breakfast Program and her name is Nafisa.

Nafisa Sultana arrived in Canada from Bangladesh in February 2009. She found her way to our kitchen five years ago, three years after I started scrambling eggs and washing dishes with other volunteers for the Saturday Breakfast Program in 2008.

Not your typical chef

In our work with a largely homeless or home-challenged group of regulars – of all ages and many ethnic backgrounds – we found in Nafisa a professional chef capable of organizing all the details of a successful program: food purchasing and storage, thoughtful preparation of balanced meals, guidance for the volunteers who range from high schoolers to the people of the diverse communities that comprise the staff and public of CNH.

From left, Maria (Philippines), Nafisa (Bangladesh), Taeko (Japan) ready to serve the cobbler.

From left, Maria (from the Philippines), Nafisa (Bangladesh) and Taeko (Japan) are ready to serve the cobbler.

On any given Saturday, you’ll find the jam-packed kitchen filled with volunteer galley hands with ethnic origins, and past lives, in Bangladesh (that’s Nafisa!), the Philippines, Japan, China, Vietnam, India, Kazakhstan, Korea, Canada and the U.S.

I’ve watched Nafisa move in her career seamlessly from refugee to resident, from hard labour at Pizza Hut, to cook and then chef at New Hope Community Services Society in Surrey and at Langara College – all the while earning her culinary arts degree at Vancouver Community College.

These have been difficult simultaneous commitments, but the extraordinary challenge that Nafisa counts as the work she treasures, above all else, is walking into our kitchen at 5:30 in the morning every Saturday and getting meals – breakfast and lunches – out to anywhere between 50 and 80 hungry people.

Not your typical Saturday

Here’s what it looked like in the kitchen on this particular early fall Saturday morning:

I arrive at the kitchen about 6:30 am, about an hour after Nafisa and Chris have lit the boilers and cranked up the ancient oven with a pilot light that works when you don’t look at it (I exaggerate, slightly). Nafisa, Chris and Viktoriya (last resident in Kazakhstan), are hard at work on the bag lunches, washing veggies, digging out the big fry pans that work well when the grill goes to sleep, as it did today.

Nafisa sees me step into her kitchen, gives me the usual bear hug through all of my guilty lateness and sharpens a couple of knives for me to chop the onions, peppers and tomatoes, and then to make a marinade for the omelets.

Advice from Nafisa: “If you use that cleaver, you’ll get the liquid over everything.” She’s right, of course. I can only bristle in my amateur-cookness. The sausages are burning in the oven, but only a little.

Volunteers file in and do the basics of breakfast: slicing loaves for toast, putting out the milk and juice, the peanut butter and margarine and jam, getting coffee out to the folks waiting for the call to come and pick up their breakfast plates – omelets, sausage, pilaf, fruit, apple cobbler for dessert, breakfast cereals on the side.

When it’s all over, we hear the occasional review from departing clients: “Thanks for everything. Eggs were a little hard.” “God bless.” And so it goes. Nafisa stands back to watch her kitchen run like a clock going backwards, dishes collected and washed, tables cleared, some of the men lingering quietly at their tables wanting to chat a bit about their week.

Nafisa is coming into her own professionally as first-rate Canadian chef, and will be honoured on November 2 in Toronto with the 2016 Be-a-Star (all-Canada outstanding chef) award from Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services for her work at Langara College. But she is at home with us at Collingwood for the long run, always with an astonishing well of energy on Saturday morning.

Dr. Richard Berwick is a volunteer with the Saturday Breakfast Program at Collingwood Neighbourhood House.

Copyright (c) 2016 Renfrew-Collingwood Community News