This week is Pride Week!

It is time for Vancouver’s Annual Pride Parade! Ever since Craig Rodwell proposed to hold a gay pride parade in New York on November 2, 1969 it has grown into a world wide event attracting thousands of people every year. Even though Toronto has emerged as a leader on progressive gay and lesbian policy in North America, Vancouver knows how to have a great Parade! Last year the Parade spanned out over 20 blocks and attracted an audience of over 600,000 people!

Each year, the Vancouver Pride Society selects a theme for the Vancouver Pride celebration. The theme selected for 2009, “Educate, Liberate, Celebrate,” so accurately gets to the heart of the Pride celebration’s purpose that it will carry through as the theme for 2010 and 2011, as well. Each year, one of the three elements will be highlighted. This year the focus is on Liberate and what it means to be free.

Leading up to the Pride parade on Sunday August 1 there are several Pre-Pride activities to do around town. Some of the pride activities are:

Thu July 29, 2010 Pride Movie NightVancity Theatre

Fri July 30, 2010 Pride Weekend Launch, J Lounge, 1216 Bute St.

Fri July 30, 2010 TELUS Davie Street Pride Party, Davie Street from Burrard to Jervis

Sat July 31, 2010 Terry Wallace Breakfast, Davie and Bute

Sun August 1, 2010 Pride Parade. Starting at 12 pm at Robson St, to Denman St, to Beach Ave.

For more information about the activities during the week, click here

Go out and enjoy one of the many activities being held during Pride Week! Looking for some people to go with? Leave a message on our Facebook site and meet up with other INTERNeX Candidates!

–          Manouk

Olympic Highlight 2010-02-23

So as the rest of the world was watching the men’s hockey match between Germany & Canada I have to admit I was encaptured by the women’s figure skating short program. It was quite a long program running up to 3 hours but the highlight of the event came with the final 3 skaters. Long time rivals, South Korean Kim Yu-Na and Japanese Mao Asada battled it out with two very fierce routines. However, no one came quite close enough to Kim’s “bond girl” dance which landed her a new world record mark of 78.50 points, a 4.74 point lead on Asada. This world champion, at the young age of 19, has dominated the season and is a hot favorite both back home in South Korea and in Canada due to the fact that she has done considerable training over here. But she showed few signs of the enormous pressure on her shoulders and confidently nailed all of her jumps whilst still keeping a her energy levels high. However, the person that truly stole the spotlight for me was Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette, who just two days ago had sadly lost her mother to a sudden heart attack just shortly after arriving in Vancouver to support her daughter. Wearing a black costume, the world silver medallist skated cleanly to her tango short programme “La Cumparsita” to the cheers of the spectators who rose to their feet at the end of her two-and-half minute routine. She hit all of her elements and tearfully finished her routine which earned her a season’s best 71.36 points and the accolades of the 11,000-plus crowd. This was definitely be a moment that will go down in Olympic history and hopefully Rochette will be able to continue on her path to the podium…Canada is really rooting for you!