With files from Shea Wind. It was one part local tourism, one part solid marketing, and one part Amazing Race. The 17th annual Tourism Challenge encouraged tourism industry staff and volunteers to take as many daytrips as possible to the Lower Mainland’s tourist hotspots (or lukewarm spots) over a six-week period. This year’s rendition of…
Let’s Play: Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre
It doesn’t matter if it’s board, mobile, video, role-playing, or card — games are a way to bring people together, to learn and hone new skills, and to collaborate on elaborate world building. They are for first dates, family fun nights, team-building, or any other social gathering. It can’t be denied there’s a game culture…
Getting to the Core of the Lower Mainland’s Growing Cider Industry
When non-cider drinkers think of cider, they picture smuggling Growers into the basement at family dinners to indulge in the may-as-well-be-juice, entry-level alcohol. But cider has been growing in popularity as a bright, sweet, summer drink and alternative to beer. The first annual Fraser Valley Cider Fest turned skeptics into apple appreciators with its stellar…
Let’s Play: Dust off your old controllers and blow in the cartridges
It doesn’t matter if it’s board, mobile, video, role-playing, or card — games are a way to bring people together, to learn and hone new skills, and to collaborate on elaborate world building. They are for first dates, family fun nights, team-building, or any other social gathering. It can’t be denied there’s a game culture…
Stories are the easy part: Wine, women, and Andrea MacPherson’s new novel
I knew this wouldn’t be a regular author interview. It couldn’t be. So when I sat down with Andrea MacPherson, a longtime mentor to many of us here at Raspberry, and frequent first reader of most of my own creative fiction, I went for the casual approach. Just a chill conversation between two passionate people…
Let’s Play: Takenoko
It doesn’t matter if it’s board, mobile, video, role-playing, or card — games are a way to bring people together, to learn and hone new skills, and to collaborate on elaborate world building. They are for first dates, family fun nights, team-building, or any other social gathering. Take a step into the new Boardwalk board…
McPoems by Billeh Nickerson
Local Harvest Customer service. For many of us it was our first job, for many of us it is still our job. It’s flipping burgers, scooping popcorn, pouring coffee. “Hi there welcome to —. What can I get for you?” Billeh Nickerson’s McPoems delivers a full value menu of what it’s like to put on…
Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor
Local Harvest “It wasn’t a question of being opposed to imported ingredients, but of preference, of allegiance, of knowing what goodness came from the earth around you, from the soil under your feet.” Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park is one part food writing, one part social advocacy, and one part artist’s journey. It unfolds gently, only…
’Tis the season to shop the markets
You may not be decking your halls just yet, but for hundreds of local artists and vendors in the Fraser Valley the Christmas craft season is here. These markets bring together everything, from food and ingredients to ornaments and kids’ clothes, in one place for the season. From now until mid-December you can find these…
Weight of Dew by Daniela Elza, 2012
Local Harvest Daniela Elza once told me that Weight of Dew is meant to be travelled with — to be slipped into a tote, and consumed on the road. While you journey through the book, your physical self journeys through the dips and turns and looming mountains of a BC road trip. I first read…