It's Saturday in Kitsilano - Oh the people you meet!
Kitsilano is a great neighborhood.  Filled with low income basement suites, students, expensive waterfront homes.  I went for a walk on Saturday afternoon with my girlfriend to pick up a birthday cake for my father.  Little did I know it would be such an adventure.

On a short walk we bumped into Liberal candidate Stephen Owen the imcumbent MP for Vancouver Quadra. Owen is mainstreeting, along with his wife and extended family including his cousin former Mayor Phillip Owen.  I ask two women what he is minister for, and his wife correctly tells me he is Minister for Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Sport).  She introduces me to her husband Stephen, and I invite him to attend Gung Haggis Fat Choy, my Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner.  Owen is in good spirits, he has heard of the event and he spontaneously these words fall from his tongue:
Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie,
 O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
With this year's Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner falling on Election Eve, it may be doubtful that many federal candidates may attend.  But Stephen Owen doesn't say no. 

Former Mayor Philip Owen greets me as well and says he remembers meeting me.  I am sure it was at a Terry Fox Run where we both were speakers.  Of course I tell him that Mayor Sam Sullivan will be at this year's GHFC dinner and last year then Mayor Larry Campbell was our special guest.

Down the street we drop by Tanglewood Books.  Inside working behind the cash register is James Mullin.  My girlfriend asks James if he is all ready for Monday night for the Gung Haggis Fat Choy World Poetry Night.  "Oh my God, yes!" says James who says he might have to borrow a kilt because he doesn't own one.

We find that the Notte's Bon Ton Pastry & Confectionary is closed for annual holidays.  Too bad.  So sad.  My father will not get his favorite cake - The Mexican Hat cake.  My 2 1/2 year old nephew will not get a marzipan animal.  He really loved the marzipan alligator I gave him in September for my mother's birthday.
http://www.tradewindbooks.com/tradewindbooks/new/bamboo.html

Vancouver Kidsbooks is one of my favorite places in Vancouver.  I could spend hours hanging out in this Vancouver cultural institution created by Phyllis Whitney.  I searched for Paul Yee's book Struggle and Hope: The Story of Chinese Canadians, which I have been recommending to people to show/give to anybody that opposes redress for Chinese Canadian head tax/exclusion issues.  But it is now out of print.  I read through Paul's new book Bamboo, and vow to purchase it the next time I attend a book signing with him.  I purchase two copies of Half and Half by Lensey Namioka about a family that is half Scottish and half Chinese.  (Trivia: way around 1984 I silk screened t-shirts for Phyllis when she first opened her store.)

I bump into Shirley Chan at Safeway, where we go to shop for a birthday cake.  Shirley married a Scottish Canadian descendant, and her daughter has attended Gung Haggis Fat Choy wearing a Chinese top, a mini-kilt and loves the image.  I gave Shirley a copy of Half and Half as a spontaneous gift.  We talk about Joy Kogawa appearing at the upcoming Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner, and she tells me she had recently purchased Naomi's Road and was shocked to hear about the potetial demolition of Kogawa House, Joy's childhood home.  Funny to bump into Shirley after only seeing her two days before at the launch for Mother Tongue, Susan Poizner's new television documentary series about women who have made a difference in their many ethnic communities.  It was Shirley's mother, Mary Lee Chan, who had helped lead the protest opposition to destroying Chinatown with a freeway.  Shirley herself, ran as a Liberal candidate in the last election, and had been Mike Harcourt's personal assistant while he had been Mayor at City Hall.  Hopefully we will see Shirley at Gung Haggis Fat Choy.