Things To Do in Vancouver This Weekend

Photo credit: Tourism Vancouver / Tanya Goehring

Well hello June! I hope you are feeling more positive and excited about the summer in light of the Province’s recent re-opening plan. I sure do miss having plans! If you haven’t made any for this weekend, here are some ideas. Celebrate Pride and join ‘The Really Gay History Tour’, stretch out your body with East Van Yoga and Container Brewing, get your wardrobe summer-ready with the Black Friday Summer Edition, grab your bike and head out for a ride to mark United Nations World Bicycle Day.

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.

Photo credit: McArthurGlen Designer Outlet

Black Friday Summer Edition

Where: McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Vancouver Airport
What: Get your wardrobe summer-ready with a week of savings with the Black Friday Summer Edition. From days out at the beach to garden parties, picnics and patio dinners, you’ll find everything you need to help keep you cool. Track down summertime essentials like dresses, sandals and shorts from Michael Kors, Tommy Hilfiger, and Banana Republic – then up the ante with on-trend summer tops and light cotton pieces from Ted Baker, sleek timepieces from Hour Passion and the latest must have heels from Jimmy Choo or vegan accessories from Matt & Nat. With so many sales from your favourite designers, there’s no shortage of excitement for this Black Friday Summer Edition.
Runs until June 6, 2021

Photo credit: Forbidden Vancouver

Forbidden Vancouver: The Really Gay History Tour

Where: Downtown Vancouver
What: It’s time for Vancouver’s secrets to come out of the closet. From drag kings and two spirit warriors, to queer church ministers and transgender crime fighters, this walking tour is a celebration of the unsung heroes who forever changed the social fabric of our city.
Runs every Sunday plus extra dates during Vancouver PRIDE week.

Yoga on Tap

Where: Container Brewing
What: Stretch out your weekend with East Van Yoga and Container Brewing! Starting this summer on Saturday mornings. You’ll be guided through a 60 minute gentle Hatha style class that includes a light warm up, a few flow sequences and deep stretching. Followed by a post class beer, what better way to start the weekend? The $25 ticket includes a post class beer on the patio.
Runs on Saturdays until August 28, 2021

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

Photo credit: Maan Farms

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

Photo credit: Polygon Gallery

Kids First Saturdays

Where: Polygon Gallery
What: Kids First Saturdays is an opportunity for families of all kinds to create an art project, based on the exhibitions being shown at The Polygon Gallery. The projects are geared towards children ranging in age from 4 to 14 years old, though there is no age requirement to participate. Advance registration for Kids First programming can be done on The Polygon’s website.
Recurring monthly on the 1st Saturday

20th Annual UBC Farm Farmers’ Market

Where: UBC Farm
What: Check out the 20th Annual UBC Farm Farmers’ Market! Don’t miss the 20th year of Vancouver’s only multi-vendor farmers’ market located on a working farm! In addition to certified organic and farm-fresh produce, fruits, herbs, and free-range eggs from the UBC Farm, the Saturday Multi-vendor Farmers’ Market also features a variety of other local vendors selling meat, cheese, mushrooms, fruit, vegetables, nursery plants, baked goods, alcohol, and prepared foods, alongside food and coffee trucks.
Runs on Saturdays until November 17, 2021

Kyrstle Coughlin Silverfox, Royal Tease, 2020

Art Auction 2021

Where: The Polygon Gallery
What: After a monumental pandemic year, The Polygon is grateful to offer the work of 22 significant artists in an online auction in support of its 2021 Exhibition Program. Featuring Derya Akay, Sara Cwynar, Andrew Dadson, Sarah Davidson, Hannah Dubois, Emily Hermant, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Russna Kaur, Landon Mackenzie, Evann Siebens, M.E. Sparks, Parviz Tanazoli, Steven Shearer, Kyrstle Coughlin Silverfox, Howie Tsui, Elizabeth Zvonar, and more.
Runs until June 18, 2021

Photo credit: Bill Reid Gallery

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

Courtesy of the Artist: Whess Harman

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

Photo credit: Andréa Saunier

“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

Photo credit: Imagine Van Gogh

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

Photo credit: Science World

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

Bill Reid carving the Skidegate Pole, 1976. Oil on canvas, by Chris Hopkins

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

Photo credit: Stefano Benazzo

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

Photo credit: Museum of Anthropology

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

Photo credit: Vancouver Art Gallery

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

Photo credit: Museum of Vancouver

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

Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site

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

Courtesy of and Copyright by The Leon Polk Smith Foundation, New York City. Photo by Adam Reich.

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

Vancouver International Children’s Festival – Online

Reimagine fun at the 2021 Vancouver International Children’s Festival with an extraordinary online line-up of world-class theatre, music, dance and storytelling created specifically for children. The reimagined 2021 Festival will offer Online performances with an extra 7 days of extended show viewing. Watch a show online from the comfort of home with Pay-What-You-Can pricing.
Runs until June 13, 2021

Photo credit: James Yip, David Cooper, World Ballet Competition

Discover Dance! Goh Ballet – Online

The exciting dancers of the internationally-renowned Goh Ballet perform for the digital June edition of The Dance Centre’s popular Discover Dance! series. Featuring members of the Goh Ballet Youth Company and Goh Ballet Academy’s Senior Professional Division, the performance will include award-winning solos by dancers who recently won top prizes at international competitions, in a performance celebrating classical repertoire, Chinese traditional dance and contemporary works.
Streaming until June 17, 2021

Kawaguchi + Takase 2014, Photo credit: Chris Randle

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

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