Things to Do in Vancouver This Weekend

Not sure what you want to do this weekend? Join a historic walking tour, check out the new exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery, celebrate Asian Heritage Month and learn how to make dumplings. Time to get off that couch and get out into the city!

Until further notice, in line with the public health order, non-essential travel into, within, and out of BC is not recommended. BC residents, let’s do our part by continuing to stay small and support local in accordance with the latest guidelines.

Historic Powell Street Walking Tours

Where: Vancouver Japanese Language School – Japanese Hall
What: In the early to mid 20th century, the Powell Street corridor was home to 8,000 Japanese Canadians and over 400 businesses in Vancouver. The history of this Japanese Canadian enclave is not common knowledge nor is it incorporated into the BC school curriculum. This walking tour focuses on the pre-war history of 8,000 Japanese-Canadians by taking you on a journey through time to various locations on historic Powell Street that were a significant part of day-to-day life.
Runs on Saturday and Thursday until Sep 11, 2021

Laburnum Walk

Where: VanDusen Botanical Garden
What:  Forty-three hybrid goldenchain trees (Laburnum x watereri ‘Vossii’) are blooming along VanDusen Garden’s Laburnum Walk. Laburnums bloom for a brief two weeks and are one of the most popular and Instagrammable blooms of the year. Laburnums are just one of the many May highlights in the Garden. Rhododendrons can be seen in an abundance of colour, and now is the perfect time to take a stroll down the Rhododendron Walk. Tickets are only available online for designated entry times at www.vandusengarden.ca.

Spot Prawn Festival

Where: Online & Fisherman’s Wharf near Granville Island
What: The Spot Prawn Festival is back for 2021! Chefs’ Table Society of BC (CTS) and The Pacific Prawn Fishermen’s Association (PPFA) have “deconstructed” the much-loved annual event that was missed in 2020 due to the pandemic. A safe COVID-19 friendly format has been created for 2021.
Runs until May 29, 2021

ParkerArtSalon

Where: Online & Various locations
What: The 6th annual much-loved ParkerArtSalon is going Canada-wide this year featuring an online auction with Waddingtons, raising funds for the Beedie Luminaries Foundation. “Essential Travel” is the title of the auction, which will be hosted at the Pendulum Gallery for public viewing from May 3-28, while bidding commences online from May 6-16. Additionally, visitors can also visit a curated selection of the works of more than 60 Parker Street Studios artists at the GALLERY GEORGE—conveniently located next to the Parker Street Studios—with two consecutive exhibitions running May 6-16 and May 20-30.
Runs until May 30, 2021

Barnyard Adventureland

Where: Maan Farms & Estate Winery
What: Come check out some fun activities, Mama Maan’s country kitchen, and the petting zoo. There are goats, sheep, bunnies, chickens, turkeys, peacocks, and guinea fowls to visit.
Open  9:00 am – 6:00 pm every day. Last entry 5:00 pm

Kitsilano Farmers Market

Where: Kitsilano Community Centre
What:50+ farms and producers, food and coffee trucks
Runs on Sundays until October 31, 2021

Riley Park Summer Farmers Market

Where: 50 E 30th Avenue & Ontario Street
What: 25+ farms and producers, food and coffee trucks
Runs on Saturdays until October 30, 2021

Trout Lake Farmers Market

Where: Lakewood Dr. & E 13th Ave.
What: 60+ farms and producers, food and coffee trucks
Runs on Saturdays until October 30, 2021

Mount Pleasant Farmers Market

Where: Dude Chilling Park
What: Every Sunday, 25+ farmers and producers, food and coffee trucks.
Runs on Sundays until October 31, 2021

West End Farmers Market

Where: Nelson Park
What: Every Saturday, 30 farmers and producers, food and coffee trucks.
Runs on Saturdays until October 30, 2021

Hands of Knowledge

Where: Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
What:  Hands of Knowledge is a collaborative exhibition featuring six contemporary Indigenous women artists, developed by Ts’msyen curator Joanne Finlay. Women can be powerful matriarchs, important knowledge keepers, cultural connectors, and the foundation of the family. Each artist celebrates traditional knowledge through contemporary works that explore sight, time, supernatural energy and spirituality. Many are connected to personal and family history and stories passed down to them as part of their lineage. Using insight, awareness and reflection, the artists look to the sights and times of their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, to view how women have influenced their work.
Runs until September 26, 2021

Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo

Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo will be the second in what is envisioned as a series of exhibitions intended to provide an expansive look at contemporary art in the Greater Vancouver region. For the 2021 version of Vancouver Special, primary emphasis is on recent works that hold a particular resonance for this time and place that have not been previously exhibited in Vancouver. The exhibition will reflect the activity of both artists at an early point in their career and more established artists whose practices span several decades. Encompassing a variety of media, scale and modes of presentation, the artworks that comprise the exhibition address themes that include cultural resilience, the articulation of suppressed histories, the performance of identity and embodied knowledge.
Runs until Sunday, January 22, 2021

“Street of India” Exhibition by Andréa Saunier

Where: Le Centre Culturel Francophone de Vancouver
What: A multi-talented artist, filmmaker, photographer, and writer, Andréa Saunier will exhibit her photographic series named “Street of India” at Le Centre Culturel. “Suspended moments captured. Inspired, unexpected, spontaneous. India soothed me. This is what lingers with me from this country, the connection with self to connect more deeply with the external world. Letting go. An invitation to silence. A bubble of tenderness”.
Runs until July 1, 2021

Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

Where: Vancouver Convention Centre West
What: In this exhibition, visitors of all ages discover a new way of reconnecting with the work of this great master. The very concept of Imagine Van Gogh is grandiose: visitors wander amongst giant projections of the artist’s paintings, swept away by every brushstroke, detail, painting medium and colour. Immersed in an extraordinary experience where all senses become fully awakened, viewers will be truly moved by such spectacular beauty. Visitors discover more than 200 of Van Gogh’s paintings, including his most famous works, painted between 1888 and 1890 in Provence, Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise.
Runs until August 29, 2021

Arctic Voices

Where: Science World
What: Arctic Voices takes visitors on a riveting journey over the tundra and into the world’s northernmost biome. Enjoy an immersive experience of the fascinating, changing Arctic through its many voices: its people, ecology, wildlife and way of life. Dance with auroras, hop on ice floes and learn just how deeply connected we are to the Arctic through this feature exhibition that will leave you awestruck and inspired.
Runs until September 6, 2021

To Speak With A Golden Voice

Where: Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
What: Launched in July 2020, the exhibition is a centennial birthday celebration of Bill Reid, who was born in 1920. The exhibition tells the story of Reid’s creative journey through four distinct sections: Voice, Process, Lineage, and Legacy. Curated by Gwaai Edenshaw—considered to be Reid’s last apprentice—the exhibition includes audio narratives, literary excerpts, rarely seen sketchbooks and casting molds, and short films, as well as newly commissioned works by Haida artist Cori Savard and singer-songwriter Kinnie Starr. It also includes the addition of two new artworks—the Eagle and Beaver Pole (1980) by Haida carver Reg Davidson and an exquisitely carved cedar door, designed by Bill Reid and carved by James Hart in 1980—as well as the anticipated commemorative book: Bill Reid, To Speak With a Golden Voice.
Runs until September 6, 2021

A Feast for the Eyes

Where: Polygon Gallery
What: Feast for the Eyes explores the rich history of food as one of photography’s most prevalent and enduring subjects. In an age where sharing images of food has emerged as a unique facet of contemporary culture, this exhibition offers a look at the timeless ways in which things we eat shape us and our perceptions of the world.
Runs until May 30, 2021

Paddles Up! The Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival Exhibit

Where: The BC Sports Hall of Fame and Museum
What: Paddles Up! The Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival Exhibit explores the festival’s history since the sport’s arrival at Expo 86. Discover unique artifacts, including two full-sized dragon boats, hear stories from athletes of all backgrounds, and learn about the festival’s cultural heritage.
Runs on Fridays and Saturdays until May 31, 2021

Silent Witness

Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: Silent Witness features a collection of photographs by Italian photographer and artist Stefano Benazzo who has spent decades seeking shipwrecks from some of the most remote locations around the globe. His work narrates the scenes of these wrecks with light and portrays the soul of the abandoned vessels. The photographs in Silent Witness tell the story of decay for these ships, capturing their architecture and presenting them as sculptures embedded in the landscape.
Runs until July 18, 2021

A Future for Memory: Art and Life After the Great East Japan Earthquake

Where: Museum of Anthropology at UBC
What: The exhibition coincides with the 10th anniversary of the 2011 triple disaster that saw a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown hit the eastern region of Japan. A Future for Memory highlights nature’s destructive impact on humans and its regenerative potential, and explores how humans live in harmony with nature. It also examines how new connections and relationships have developed in the aftermath of this tragic event.
Runs until September 5, 2021

Sun Xun: Mythological Time

Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Sun Xun is a mid-career Chinese artist who works in a range of mediums including painting, drawing, animation, video and installation. In his highly imaginative video installation Mythological Time (2016), Sun takes viewers on a journey through his hometown of Fuxin in northern China, a coal-mining centre facing the depletion of its economic lifeblood. Sun’s video installation from the Gallery’s collection will be presented alongside a major 30-metre ink painting, being shown for the first time.
Runs until September 6, 2021

A Seat at the Table

Where: Museum of Vancouver
What: The Museum of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia proudly present a new feature exhibition, A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia. This exhibition explores historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC and their struggles for belonging. It looks to food and restaurant culture as an entry point to feature stories that reveal the great diversity of immigrant experience and of the communities immigrants develop.
Runs until January 2022

Waves of Innovation: Stories from the West Coast

Where: Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site
What: The exhibition features stories of adaptations and innovations in the commercial fishing industry and their effects on west coast communities. Four key areas of innovation will be highlighted – energy, fishing, preservation, and innovations of today. Quotes from the diverse fishing communities and examples of artifacts from each area of innovation will be featured, alongside interactive displays which will help visitors of all ages and backgrounds explore the question – What does innovation mean to you?
Runs until April 15, 2022

North Van Arts: Printmaker’s Mark

Where: City Scape Community Art Space
What: Printmaking dates back thousands of years: Sumerians used clay printing wheels in 3000 BCE, Chinese used stone rubbings in 200 CE and Egyptians used woodblocks for printing fabric in 600 CE. In 1400 CE movable type and the screw press created an explosion of knowledge. Using silkscreen, wood, metal, linoleum and plastic, the artists in the group exhibition educate, tell stories, and express their ideas and visions through printmaking.
Runs until Sunday, May 30, 2021

Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space

Where: The Contemporary Art Gallery
What:  The first solo exhibition in a public gallery in Canada by American artist Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996). Focusing on paintings and works on paper from the 1950s, the exhibition charts a critical moment in Smith’s artistic career in which the signature visual language of his work began to manifest, reflective both of prevalent trends of the time and an increasing engagement with the contexts of his upbringing and identity. Big Form, Big Space provides a timely opportunity to re-evaluate Smith’s place within art history, looking beyond the strict appreciation of his place within hard-edge modernist abstraction to encompass broader considerations of context, time and identity.
Runs until  August 20, 2021

The Cultch: 1 Hour Photo – Online

Written and performed by Tetsuro Shigematsu (creator of the hit show Empire of the Son), ​1 Hour Photo​ is the story of Mas Yamamoto, a man whose life was swept up by the major currents of the 20th century. From growing up in a fishing village on the banks of the Fraser River, to being confined at a Japanese Canadian internment camp during World War II, to helping build the Distant Early Warning Line in the Canadian Arctic during the height of the Cold War,​ 1 Hour Photo​ is a moving portrait saturated with the most vivid colours of our times.

In My Kitchen: Dumpling Making for Asian Heritage Month – Online

The journey starts when participants experience the rich knowledge and flavours of Raymond’s Vietnamese heritage.  He will share his family’s traditions of making heirloom dumplings from scratch while guest enjoy the history and techniques passed down through the generations.
Sunday, May 30, 2021

Bundle Dyes and Hapazome Workshop with CZarina Lobo – Online

Join CZarina Lobo, a Natural Dyer focused on cultivating plants for colour, in a Bundle Dye and Hapazome Workshop. Learn the techniques of bundle dyes and Hapazome (flower/leaf pounding) by transferring your natural surroundings onto a unique bandana and a reusable drawstring bag. This will be achieved by steaming and also requires hammering locally foraged fresh plant materials onto fabric to show vibrant colours and botanical patterns. Bundle dyes are an artform of transferring leaf and flower colours and prints onto cloth or paper. The material is decorated with the plant material and then wrapped around a stick and steamed. Hapazome is the art of transferring leaf and flower prints by gently hammering them onto paper or cloth.
Saturday, May 29, 2021

Ponteix | La légende de Calamity Jane – Online

Ponteix presents its virtual tour! Discover the album “Bastion”, with its dreamy melodies and pop songs, nominated in no fewer than 10 categories at the 2021 Gala Trille Or! For the second half of the show, we are transported to the Far West with the show “La légende de Calamity Jane”, with sisters Annette and Michelle Campagne who will sing songs about this mythic character from the days of the Wild West.
Saturday, May 29, 2021

The Dance Centre: TWObigsteps Collective: Departure – Online

Marissa Wong and Katie Cassady, two of Vancouver’s most exciting young choreographers, premiere a pair of expressive new contemporary dance works exploring relationships and emotions in Departure. Wong’s solo, also titled Departure, is inspired by Bessel Van Der Kolk’s bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score and considers the impact experiences have on our behaviour patterns. Cassady’s duet II focuses on the relationship between two women, examining power dynamics, intimacy, and the strange ways we connect with and support each other.
Streaming on Friday May 28, 2021 and Saturday May 29, 2021

explorAsian 2021 – Online

explorASIAN is an annual Metro-Vancouver festival showcasing pan-Asian Canadian arts and culture during Asian Heritage Month in May. Programming continues to showcase the great achievements and contributions of Canadians of Asian descent in the arts and culture scene, with expanded programming that reflects pressing issues facing Asian-Canadian communities in Metro-Vancouver.
Runs until May 31, 2021

Vancouver International Dance Festival – Online

The Vancouver International Dance Festival celebrates its 21st season with 18 livestream contemporary dance performances. Broadcast from the KW Production Studio, the 2021 VIDF presents cinematic perspectives of contemporary dance streamed live to wherever you are. This weekend Vancouver’s Company 605 will present Brimming (April 29-30 & May 1). The new solo investigating the body as a container was created and performed by its co-artistic director Josh Martin.
Streaming until June 19, 2021

Carmen: Up Close and Personal – Online

Inspired by French arthouse film, stage director Brenna Corner adds a non-traditional lens to Bizet’s beloved masterpiece. Playing with the conflicting ideas of fate and choice, Carmen: Up Close and Personal is an alluring, intimate and stripped-down cinematic adaptation, focused on the four principal characters, with a few twists and turns along the way. Starring members of the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program with members of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra.
Streaming until June 1, 2021

Chan Centre’s Spring 2021 Dot Com Series – Online

The Chan Centre’s Spring 2021 Dot Com Series features eight all-new performances which will be delivered 100% online and recorded around the globe—from Mexico to Montreal to our very own Chan Centre stage. Additional Performances launched every two weeks.
Runs until May 31, 2021