FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Community Rallies to End Homelessness Beautifully in the Dundarave Festival of Lights
Nativity Carving Tells Story of Homelessness at the First Christmas

(West Vancouver, www.dundaravefestival.com) December 15, 2010   On Saturday December 18th, 2 pm to 9 pm, families, Morris dancers, firefighters and realtors, community choirs and youth orchestras, and Master Caver Bill Seminoff will gather at West Vancouver’s spectacular Dundarave Beach to answer homelessness with a blaze of glory.  Their aim is to see a forest of Christmas trees lit with 50,000 lights raise $25,000 for the Lookout Emergency Aid Society’s North Shore Shelter.

Now in its nineteenth year, and one of the oldest coastal Christmas festivals in Metro Vancouver, the Dundarave Festival of Lights Society crowns four Saturdays of free concerts with its Christmas Wassail and Bonfire Night.  The Festival’s Society, through the generous support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, is streaming over $30,000 in new funding to support school and community performing arts programs.

The Dundarave Nativity, life-sized carvings in old growth red cedar, remains at the heart of Dundarave Beach where it has been every Christmas for at least two generations as a witness to the reality of homelessness in our community.  Carved by an unknown artist, the figures have been restored since 2005 by Master Carver Bill Seminoff.  This year, Seminoff spent 700 hours this year carving a new king for the nativity as a labour of love, because he could not make peace with the presence of only one king in this setting.  Seminoff is at work now carving a third king for next Christmas.  He is using 2 tons of salvaged old growth red cedar, a gift from Timberwest Forest Products.

Over the past two Christmases, the Dundarave Festival of Lights has raised $50,000 in charitable donations to the Lookout Emergency Aid Society.  If it reaches its goal this Saturday, the Festival will have raised a total of $75,000.

The Lookout Society has used funds raised by the Festival to build the North Shore Culinary Training Program under Chef Don Guthro.  The program gives life skills and employable skills to its trainees, allowing people who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless the power to find and keep dignified employment.

Beneath the veneer of Canada’s most expensive postal codes is the painful reality that the Lookout Emergency Aid Society’s North Shore Shelter is only one thousand bednights less busy than its counterpart across the harbour in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Seniors are now being hit hard by the economic downturn.  Lookout reports eighty-year-old North Shore residents have started turning to the shelter for help this year, a first in the shelter’s history.

“The work of the Dundarave Festival of Lights is to gather the resources and talent of our community to end homelessness beautifully,” said Festival spokesperson Michael Markwick.  “We are seeing a depth of commitment that we’ve never seen before, from every part of our community, to make sure no one is left out in the cold.”

The Festival attracts an estimated 65,000 people each year to its Christmas trees on Dundarave Beach.  Elders of the Squamish Nation blessed the Festival’s Longhouse and Nativity Pavilion.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Michael Markwick, 778-847-1426
markwick@sfu.ca