This morning, they imploded the old Woodwards building. I wish I’d gone down to watch. The Future of Woodwards is layed out here…

What REALLY pisses me off is that I can’t find any News stories on CBC about it being destroyed!! All I can find is “Province buys old Woodwards Building” from back in 2003. Grrrr…..

QUOTE: City of Vancouver – History of Woodwards

The Woodward’s Department Store was first established at the corner of Hastings and Abbott in 1903, and grew to occupy half the block bounded by Hastings, Abbott, Cordova, and Cambie streets. For many decades, Woodward’s was one of Vancouver’s primary retail destinations: anchoring the retail along Hastings and providing its low and modest income neighbours with a food floor and other household necessities. It became known city-wide for its Christmas displays and the neon “W” on the roof.

Woodward’s closed its Hastings Street store in 1993 and in early 1995 the property was sold to Fama Holdings (Fama). In June 1995, the City’s Development Permit Board approved Fama’s preliminary application to develop a mixed-use project consisting of condominium units and commercial and retail space, subject to conditions. However, the project generated substantial opposition among the low-income community because it did not include any social housing.

Woodward’s was designated a heritage building in November 1996.

To read the history of this now-destroyed heritage building, visit Wikipedia: Woodward’s Building and/or Woodward’s Department Store

Cool Idea for a Costume (see link!)

Do you think I should do this??

Yesterday was Word on the Street in downtown Vancouver. I was volunteering with Rachel and Fiona for our Publishing/Pacific Rim booth. I caved and bought the WotS bag… There were only 250 of them… but it was $18. For the amount of things I collected, I’d say it was good. I got another tote bag, the Vancouver Public Library’s Book of the Summer, a couple books of poetry, and probably 50 magazine samples! I guess it payed off.

Rachel and I manned the booth for a chunk of the morning while Fiona went off and explored. Then Rachel went to grab caffine and food when Fiona got back. And I went out to explore for a few minutes after that. When our shift ended, Rachel and I went exploring together. We wanted to see a Speaker-Event (which we ended up missing)… hahah. But we stopped at nearly every booth we could see, and I collected all the Treasure Hunt Book Bag stuff. Some of the booths we couldn’t find.

We finished the day by going to Word UNDER the Street. It’s full of Zines and Comics and it’s below the Library in the auditorium/presentation rooms. So it was a very eventful day. Jim from RicePaper came over to the Pacific Rim booth and introduced himself. Also, they’re looking for interns for RicePaper; They know that Pacific Rim is by students. Our teacher, Elizabeth was there too and she was going around to all the magazine booths telling people to come see us! Dance International Magazine is also looking for interns. Rachel was pretty excited about that.

When Rachel’s friend, Kelly, met up with her they were planning to go to the Church of Scientology booth… just to be amused. The booth wasn’t labeled as Church of Scientology… It was labeled as something else (can’t remember) and they were doing Free Stress Tests… and as soon as the test was done… they pumped the Scientology Book. L. Ron. Hubbard….. hahaha…..

So I’m pretty excited about some of the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival stuff I picked up. I’ve also got some “tips for submitting articles” to different magazines. And I’ve got a ton of business cards and info on contests for certain magazines. I’ll have to go through it all thoroughly and see what I’ve got. I also got a load of information from different schools on more Writing/Publishing programs. The one at SFU looks more focused to Writing, and it’s mainly just all the courses available. There is one at UBC – the Creative Writing MBA (or something like that). Douglas College has one more geared to writing for ___ insert material here ____. And you can transfer to Royal Roads University in Victoria for some of their courses and finishing touches. The Malahat Review is put out from the University of Victoria, so I’m assuming students submit to it or work on it.

So that’s about it. If I find anything interesting when I go through it all again, I’ll probably post about it. But for now, despite the school info, the plans are tentatively set.Once I’m done Langara, I’m definitely moving to England (in a couple years).

I just got home a couple hours ago from class…. it’s the most annoying schedule in the world, and I had no say over it. Most days we go until 10pm… Wednesdays are great and we get to be home for dinner, and Fridays we get off at 9:30. Some days we end in Adobe Photoshop Labs and if you don’t have anything left to do, or don’t want to use your time wisely, you can leave.

Everyday we either start at 2:30 or 3:30 in the afternoon. Quite a change from either 8:30 or 9:25 in the morning at Ideal! I have to say though, everything from Ideal prepared me for this! Yearbook and English class the most!! And also, visuals (aka Title Pages Anna!) for Jim Essays!

I remember showing up the first day of school (after the Power Outage at Langara on the real first day). I didn’t know if I should go to the classroom early, so I talked on my cellphone in the stairwell, so as not to disturb other classes. When I showed up at the computer lab, I stood at the door wondering if I was in the right place… everyone was just sitting at computers in the MacLab. There was nothing such as “PUBLISHING” written on the white board… and the teacher was at her computer too. It wasn’t until someone came up behind me and said “Excuse me” because I was blocking the doorway. I let her in and followed her to the computers. It appeared that we were filling up the rows one by one, so I sat next to her. I now know her well.

Everything we’re doing in Publishing pertains to the industry. Because it is a career program, we don’t learn semi-useless things that are mildly interesting. Not that I doubt Big Universities aren’t interesting, but the courses I was planning to take were very “General Arts”. There was nothing streamlined, nothing focused, nothing directly in check with my interests. That was why I dropped all my UBC courses and registered for Publishing at Langara. The Career Programs are meant to teach to everything they can about the industry in the condensed course schedule. Most career programs are two years, but Publishing is only one year. August 2007 I will leave the program with a diploma in hand and job offers at the door! I wouldn’t be able to handle four years.