Update: Friday Feb 19th

Today was our first show at the Surrey live site! And the show went very well. We are part of the Pan North presentation at both the Surrey and Richmond live sites. Our next live site performance is on the 23rd in Richmond. We are getting ready for the big presentation however this coming Sunday at the Aboriginal Pavilion in downtown Vancouver. It should be the highlight of the trip!

YFN 2010: Wednesday February 17th

Here is today's report from Vancouver! It was an absolutely gorgeous day here today weather wise in Vancouver. Sunny +10 or more... and a nice day to just relax! After yesterday's marathon walk, I wasn't about to do that again, so I spent half of the day relaxing at the house. We had a very nice "columbian" style egg breakfast made by Diego our sound man. The crew (director, SM and SD) headed off to the rehearsal in Richmond around 12:30pm. I headed to Broadway Camera around 2pm in search of miniDV tapes for the camera.

As it turns out, Broadway Camera was completely sold out of tapes, but there was a Sony Style store directly across the street, and they had ME class tapes, which was perfect! And exactly what I needed.

I then headed to rehearsal to meet up with our 43 performers and crew in Richmond. I got to ride on the "Canada Line" train on my route. An un-manned subway system, which was quite interesting. The train was packed, but that was to be expected given the events going on around town. I arrived in time for the thunderous sounds of the grand finale of our show. We had a very nice dinner at the hotel where our performers were staying, and afterwards headed to the OZone in Richmond to check out the live site where we will be performing the show on the 23rd.

After seeing the live site, we headed back to the house together in a cab, and called it a night. All in all, a nice day in Vancouver.

Day 1 in Vancouver...

Today, was the first full day in Vancouver, and we started off the morning by sleeping in a bit... but that was perfectly fine with us. We headed to the Aboriginal pavilion for 12pm to do a site tour. We arrived with a show just about to commence, so we ended up watching it. It was showcasing the Cree indians of Canada, and it was a good presentation. I was able to get a good idea of the lighting situaiton. The venue is very small, so there is not much we can do, but we are adding some fixture's for gobo's, and that is a good thing.

Once we were done at the pavilion, Alejandro and Diego (director and sound designer) went their seperate way, as they needed to go to the airport to collect some of the gear which was coming in as cargo. Chris and I headed to Yaletown with Chris's friend Phil. Phil worked on the opening ceremony, and will be working on the closing as well as other events throughout the olympics. We had lunch at a very nice restaurant in Yaletown - which used to be an industrial area of Vancouver. It has been converted into an area that reminds me of Toronto's distillery district.

We were thinking of going to the Yaletown live site after lunch, however long line-ups didn't seem attractive, thus we ended up deciding the take the ferry across to Granville island, and checking out the scene over there. While over at the island, I was stunned by the gorgeous view of Vancouver's downtown west area - over near Stanley Park. There was a beautiful mountain range in the background. So I decided to split from Chris and Phil, and headed for a walk to Vanier Park. The view paid off - it was stunning, and got some great photos.

I then spent the next 5 hours or so in downtown Van. I took the ferry over to the mainland of downtown, and walked up Horby. I did a stop into Robson square, where there was quite the buzz. I decided to return, but first - I was flame bound! That's right.... the olympic flame (outdoors). So off I went, and saw, and took pics. Then back to Robson square! There wasn't much going on, so I just sat down for a while, took a load off, and once I was refreshed, headed for the bus and back to the house.

Highlight of the day: The Olympic Flame.

In Vancouver!

8pm local time here in Vancouver, I have arrived! After a 4 hour flight, we have arrived in Vancouver... there were athletes on our flight -- we believe a number of them were curlers from Switzerland, and there was a Croatian cross country skier.

We are settled into the rental house, and looking forward to tomorrow. We are heading downtown to check out the sights and sounds of the Olympic buzz.

VANCOUVER 2010

Hi all,

as of Monday February 15th, I will be on my way to Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics. I am working for the Yukon First Nation's show "What The Land Remembers", which will be featured at the Aboriginal Centre on the 21st of February with 4 shows. We will also be performing the show at two live sites as part of the Olypics in Richmond and Surrey. I will be updating the blog here on my site on a daily basis while I am in Vancouver, and letting you know how things are going over in Vancouver. I am very excited to go and be part of the celebrations, even if only a small part in a much larger event.

David

Millworks Presentation

On Saturay February 6th, David gave a presentation to the "Canadian Tool Group". The presentation was well received, to a full room of participant's from the group. The presentation ran for approximately 1 hour. David would like to thank all of those members of the Tool group that attended the talk. The feedback from the talk will be great for future presentation's. David will be presenting the MILLWORKS project to the Beach Photo Club on June 3rd 2010.

MILLWORKS upcoming presentation.

The Tool Group Of Canada will be hosting David Sweeney on Saturday February 6th, 10:00am at the Victoria Square Community Centre in Markham. David will be presenting images, and some history on favourite mills including the Tyrone Mill, Hope Sawmill, Robert Nesbitt Sawmill, and more.

You can see the advertisement for the upcoming meeting on the tool group's website: www.thetoolgroupofcanada.com

David is busy preparing images for a slideshow, and powerpoint presentation which will last approximately 1 hour. A longer version of this presentation will be presented at the Beach Photo Club on June 3rd 2010.