Ender and I decided to spend our March Break visiting family in British Columbia. It's much warmer in BC than it is in Manitoba, and we wanted to be outside as much as possible. We began in Vancouver and had a short visit with my aunt and my cousins. Highlights include flying kites and drinking warm tea on a rainy day.
Flying kites in the park.
Running into the wind.
Butterfly
Warming up at a coffee shop.
Tea and muffins.
Next, we spent a few days in Victoria visiting my uncle and his family. BC school's have already had their Spring Break so we had the the first day to ourselves to hike and visit the Royal BC Museum.
Mount Douglas
Spring flowers everywhere!
Downtown Victoria
On the second day my uncle JJ showed us the observatory where he works and we visited Goldstream Provincial Park where salmon spawn in the fall.
Ender and JJ
Ender has a great uncle in Chilliwack who we visited for about 3 days. We hiked several trails near Cutlas Lake, including the Seven Sisters Trail, named for the gigantic Douglas Firs that grow there. I took a lot of pictures on our 12km hike.
Lichen
Moss
Golden Jelly Cone
While in Chilliwack we also visited the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve where the herons are now nesting. For such large birds they have surprisingly small nests.
Heron nests
Graham and Judy
We finished off the trip back in Vancouver to spend Easter Sunday with my family.
"You need better music Aunt Jo."
This is our last time returning to Garden Hill. The next flight we take with Perimeter will be our last! We're both pretty excited to be moving onto new things.
Yesterday and Today, Elisapee Ishulutaq, oil stick on paper
The art festival trip was a complete success! We managed to fit in not only the festival but a number of other activities in the city on a limited budget. Hopefully this becomes an annual event.
Tommy and his pencil drawings.
Chelsea with her pine marten prints.
Zoey and her Oji-Cree counting book.
Madison and her bird painting.
We brought a lot of artwork with us to Winnipeg. Our school is very fortunate to have so many creative and supportive teachers who value the arts. Everyone seemed really impressed with the talent of our students.
Fox Lake presenting "What the 7 Teachings Mean to Me."
Poplar River School presentation
Nelson House anti-bullying skit.
Each school was responsible for giving a presentation in the morning. Because we chose to bring students to present their visual art, we did not plan on performing any of the songs we did at our festival. Instead I talked a bit about our school's festival, the art we made, and showed pictures. Other schools spoke about their community, performed Red River Jigs, and one school performed two poems. We were really impressed with the hard work that went into these presentations.
Lunch break!
KES table one.
KES table two with chaperons Nick and Lorna.
Planetarium
Portrait drawing workshop.
Learning about traditional games.
Traditional games.
Students having their caricatures drawn.
After lunch there were a variety of activities for the kids. There were stations for portrait drawing, traditional games, caricatures and Wilfred Buck brought his portable planetarium.
Celebratory dinner at Montana's.
Table doodles.
Happy Birthday!
That night we went out to dinner at Montana's to celebrate. We even got to sing one student happy birthday!
These Rodney Graham prints are too perfect.
We finished the trip off with breakfast at Stella's and a visit to the WAG. We made sure to bring our sketchbooks so that we could draw some of the artwork on display.
Taking time to copy some Elisapee Ishulutaq prints.
Our students had such a wonderful time in Winnipeg. Opportunities like these are few and far between for Garden Hill. Hopefully this becomes an annual event for MFNERC. If you would like to read more about the festival you can check out their website.
