seafest moments.

The middle of June brings one of Prince Rupert's biggest weekends of year: Seafest.  A jam-packed three days of family-friendly activities all over town.

The truth is, however, I didn't actually get to see much of it.  I pulled a rookie mistake and committed to two full days of work activities as part of Seafest, plus some prep in the evening and missed out on experiencing much of the festivities.

Lesson learned. Next year= more fun, less work.

It didn't mean that I didn't enjoy the weekend. There was a great vibe around town- tons of happy families, music, and festive atmosphere.  Even Ty got into the spirit.  He and another friend participated in the kayak firedrill race in which teams paddle out to an inflatable life raft and then have to switch spots in a tandem kayak before racing back.  They won (so proud!) and managed not to dump, unlike one of their competitors.

Here are some (poorly captured on my phone) moments from the weekend.

Kayak photo by Thanh Nguyet Nguyet vo

highway 37

Sweet, sweet long weekends. Nothing is better.  Easter might just be the cream of the long weekend crop due to it's extended tenure.  But, as much as I love a long weekend, I also sometimes find them a bit overwhelming. I always feel like they need to be BIG.  Something needs to happen. I don't want to squander the gift. Staying at home seems a bit like a long weekend cop-out.  Needless to say, as Easter snuck up on us, I panicked a bit.  What to do?

Luckily, there is a lot of northwestern BC for us to explore. So on Good Friday after some very last minute planning, we headed out for a weekend excursion with a few friends to the humming metropolis of Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK.  To get there, we struck out along Highway 37.

Turning off Highway 16 east of Terrace, Highway 37 leads from the Kitwanga junction (gas station has a permanently out-of-order washroom, be warned) and leads 725 km north to the Yukon border.  Stewart is a much more manageable 215km along.  En route, we stopped along the way to snap some photos are enjoy the scenery.

Driving east along the Skeena.  I will never get sick of this scenery.

Kitwanga junction

St Paul's Anglican church at Kitwanga junction

Since I am my mother's daughter, I was obviously stoked upon learning that there is a National Historic Site along the way, the Gitwangak Battle Hill National Historic Site (see here for more info).  Self-guided interpretive trail...JACKPOT (no sarcasm intended...no....really)!

Looking down on Battle Hill from the road

At the top of Battle Hill.

The Gitwangak Battle Hill was an 18th century fortress established by legendary Gitwangak warrior, 'Nekt.  Used as a base with several homes, the fort was protected by a series of spiked logs that were rigged to be let go should any enemies try to attack.  Pretty badass, if you ask me.  

Doggy stairmaster

View from Battle Hill.

After a few stops, however, we got road-trip impatient and made a beeline for Stewart only stopping again once we'd turned off onto Highway 37a and the scenery started looking like this. 

View from the passenger seat

So freaking beautiful.  Stay tuned for more on our long weekend roadie.  Spoiler: we may have had a rifle pulled on us in Alaska.  

all native basketball tournament

I know, I know....Basketball?  But trust me, the All Native Basketball Tournament is Prince Rupert's biggest event of the year and not to be missed. Beyond the fact that it attracts  over 50 teams from all over British Columbia (and their fans), the entire event feels like a big festival that includes an Opening Ceremony, vendors, performances and incredible food.

The tournament is always held in Prince Rupert and has origins dating back to 1947.  It began with Intermediate and Senior Men's divisions, but expanded twenty years ago to include a Master's and a Women's tournament as well.  Learn more about the tourney here.

To be honest, I know pretty much nothing about basketball.  At best, I could probably  name a handful of NBA players (including, if we're being totally honest, Bryant 'Big Country' Reeves and I am pretty sure he hasn't played in the NBA since he was a Vancouver Grizzly)...but the All Native tournament was huge fun.  The caliber of play seemed high (to me at least) and the crowds were phenomenal (despite the fact that most of my game photos were taken during early morning games with small crowds, most games were packed).  I love jumping on a good band-wagon and here it was very easy to do!

Definitely the highlight of the week was attending the Opening Ceremonies.  We were incredibly lucky to be given a pair of free tickets to this sold-out event and I am so glad we went.  Each year, a different nation is responsible for the ceremonies and this year it was the Haida.  Imagine 60+ Haida drummers and singers, plus another 100 or so dancers all dressed in cedar woven hats, blankets and masks.  Just wow.

Moments from the Opening Ceremonies

The Haida began with a scene depicting Gagiit- a sasquatch like creature

Then all the teams entered, many dancing their way in, and pretty soon the entire gymnasium floor was packed.   As the teams exited, the entire floor burst into bouts of dancing as the Haida continued the celebration.  More wow.

Players entering to the sound of drums

All the teams lined up on the court.

Just as you thought it was done, the Haida performers literally erupted in dancing.

I spent part of the week doing outreach for work at the festival (many groups and organization have booths set up), so I watched a fair number of the Master's and Women's games which were held in the same area.  My professional demeanor went out the window when I was screaming as the Greenville women's team won right at the buzzer!

A small crowd at one of the early morning Master's game. 

As fun as the week was, I do however have three regrets that I will try my best to remedy next year:
1) Bring my SLR to the Opening Ceremonies...my little point and shoot camera didn't really do it justice.  Check out some of the event photography from Full Moon Photo here.
2) Try harder to get my hands on one of the clam fritters! Apparently they are amazing, but were always sold out when I went for a snack. 
3) Attend the finals.  I'm sorry we missed them this year as I am sure the games and the energy in the crowd is something to experience.

Trying out whipped soapberries

culture jam

I wouldn't consider myself an artistic person.  Sure, I love the odd crafty DIY, but most often I am following steps or mimicking something I've seen or admired (damn you, Pinterest).  This weekend, however, I did a little digging for my inner artiste and spent the entire weekend participating in the 2014 Culture Jam.

This annual event in Prince Rupert is put on by the local Arts Council.  It brings in facilitators to lead groups through an intensive weekend workshop in various artistic disciplines.  'Mingles' throughout the weekend give the different groups a taste of what is happening in the other workshops.

This year there were three different disciplines represented: fabric arts, photography, and drawing (there was also supposed to be a song writing workshop, but unfortunately they did not have sufficient sign-up). The groups mostly work independently, but all groups are working off a common theme.  This year's theme was 'Tall Tales'.

At the urging of a new friend, I signed up for the photography workshop.  I was somewhat terrified going in.  Despite owning a DSLR for many years, I really know very little about the technical side of photography.  I was worried I would be in way over my head, but luckily our workshop was facilitated by an incredibly talented and encouraging photographer named Tara Nicholson. Check out her website and some of her work here: taranicholson.com.

Tara led us through a jam packed weekend (seriously, we were there for 5 hours on Friday night, all day Saturday and all day Sunday).  In the three days she taught us technical skills, got us to create mini-collections, showed us a huge variety of work from contemporary photographers, had us making cyanotypes, and even threw in a photo collage project.  It was pretty amazing.

As I said, the theme for this weekend was 'Tall Tales'.  We were asked to interpret this theme in any way we wanted and create 5-7 images depicting our interpretation.  To me, a tall tale is something fantastical, unreal.  Something like a fairy tale.  So I decided to photograph characters and elements of fairy tales, as you would find them in Prince Rupert.  I dubbed it "There are fairy tales among us" (Pretentious much? Yep).  Here are the images I used for my project:

Carriage

Goldilocks

Castle

Snow white

Witch

Wolf

They aren't perfect images. They tend to be over exposed and I definitely need a fixed lens, a tripod, and a whole lot more practice....but I am pretty proud of them. I challenged myself to shoot entirely in manual mode and to choose subjects that I normally wouldn't. In the end, the whole thing wasn't really about making a perfect picture. It was about using a part of my brain that I don't use nearly enough these days.

Thank you, Culture Jam.