Barb Elyett Sunshine Coast Mini-Tour


Described as a captivating singer, Barb Elyett is a contemporary Christian recording artist, speaker, award-winning songwriter, and four time Maja Music Award nominee that is making a name for herself in Canadian Christian music.

On Friday, October 2, she will be kicking off her Sunshine Coast mini-tour with a performance at 7:30pm at St. Hilda’s By The Sea Anglican Church in Sechelt (5838 Barnacle Street). Other performances include an evening concert on October 3 at 7:30pm at St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church (659 North Road) in Gibsons followed by a performance at The Salvation Army Church (4500 Joyce) in Powell River on October 4 that will begin with a potluck dinner at 5:00pm and concert at 6:00pm.

Following the lead of artists like Loreena McKennitt and Allison Crowe, Elyett established her own record label, Aleta Records, on which she recently released her debut CD. Working with award-winning producer and engineer, Bill Buckingham (Carolyn Arends, Rita MacNeil), at The Palace Studios in Vancouver, BC, Elyett created an album that highlights both her vocal and songwriting ability while accenting her acoustic-driven, piano-based soulful sound.

Already receiving international airplay and accolades, Elyett’s stand out vocals and writing are powerful and effective and need to be heard says Michael Hughes of Christian Mix Inet Radio, Missouri.

Daniel James of Roo Records, Colorado, commented that Elyett’s songs rank as high in quality as today’s top Christian artists, and selected one of Elyett’s songs to be included on the Music to Live By compilation CD that was distributed nationwide this Spring.

Elyett has shared the stage with Celine Dion, Michael Bublé and Checo Tohomaso (Lionel Ritchie, Marvin Gaye) and was a featured soloist for the Vancouver Community Soul Gospel choir and the Ninth Hour Band.

With an acoustic-driven, piano-based, soulful sound, Elyett’s concert is sure to please those that enjoy a satisfying musical experience.

These are FREE concerts so bring your friends! (An optional free will offering will be collected at each event).

For more info: contact Aleta Records at 250-204-2478 or www.aletarecords.com

Tibetan Sand Mandala


From September 13th to 19th four Tibetan Buddhist monks will make a traditional sacred Sand Mandala on the Sunshine Coast.

The monks are from Gaden Jangste monastery in a Tibetan refugee area in southern India. They will be doing a cross-Canada tour this summer and fall to raise money for their monastery.

There are hundreds of sand mandala designs – this one will be the mandala of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. One of its purposes is to confer blessings and healing to those who view it and to the whole world.

A mandala is painstakingly made by placing grains of coloured sand in intricate traditional patterns, usually covering a circular area three to five feet in diameter. Depending on the size of the mandala, it takes four monks four to seven days to complete.

The monks begin with a ceremony of chants, prayers and music to consecrate the site where the mandala will be built. They will also do prayers and chants each morning before beginning work on the mandala. When it is completed there is another ceremony in which the sand is swept up into a pile to celebrate the impermanence of physical creations. Some of the sand is given to the people present at the ceremony and the rest is ceremonially taken to a nearby river where its blessings are dispersed to the ocean and to all the world.

Location: St. John’s United Church, 5805 Davis Bay Road, Davis Bay
Opening ceremony: 2:00 pm, Sunday, September 13th
Viewing times: 9:00 am to 5:00 pm from September 14th until the closing ceremony. Morning prayers at 9:00 am.
Closing ceremony & mandala dispersal: 2:00 pm, Saturday, September 19th. Join the monks to walk from the United Church to Chapman Creek for the sand dispersal.
Entrance: by donation (suggested $5 to $10 for a single visit)

For more photographs or other information please contact Janet at the above email address or phone numbers.

Tibet: Sacred Music, Sacred Dance


On September 20th, the four Tibetan monks will be performing an evening of sacred music, dance, blessings and ritual debate at the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse.

The Tibetan culture is one of the most ancient on our planet and it is highly endangered as a result of the Chinese invasion of their homeland in the 1950's. Although based in the Buddhist traditions of early Indian Civilization, the culture far predates the 2,500 years of Buddhist history.

Ritual performances of sacred music and dance were held at Tibetan Buddhist monasteries to establish communication with the higher powers of good, and to bring about personal, social and environmental healing. Whenever a monastery celebrated a spiritual festival, people from the surrounding villages and nomadic tribes would assemble in the monastery's courtyard for three or four days of sacred music, blessings and dance.

This is a rare opportunity to experience some of those rituals.

Location: Heritage Playhouse, 662 North Road, Gibsons
Time: 7:30 to 9:00 pm
Cost: $20. Seniors & students $15
Tickets: available at the door only from 6:45 pm

The monks will also be available for personal or business blessings during the evenings.

Tsengdok Rinpoche, a high lama from Tsengdok Monastery in Vancouver, will perform a Chenrezig empowerment ceremony sometime during the week of the mandala. Anyone wishing to take part in this ceremony must contact Janet ahead of time.

Volunteers are needed for a number of tasks, including driving and cooking lunches for the monks. We are also happy to accept sponsorships, including donations of food and funding. All donations are tax deductable.

For more information on any of these events, to volunteer or become a sponsor, to arrange for a blessing or to take part in the empowerment ceremony please visit www.spiritdance.net/centre or contact Janet at centre@spiritdance.net or (604) 885-3602.

Spirit Dance Centre for Spiritual Ecology is a charitable multi-faith organization whose goals include promoting inter-faith understanding, respect for the planet, compassion for all beings, and ethical and spiritual values.

GREENING THE LOCAL ECONOMY ONE CLICK AT A TIME
A new Sunshine Coast business launches this June

Reduce, reuse, recycle is a familiar motto reminding us to minimize our ecological footprint on the planet. Can the 3 R’s be applied to commerce? Can it show us how to keep our economy sustainable? If you replace the 3 R’s with 3 G’s then you get a new Sunshine Coast business and a possible answer. The business is called Gyos, an acronym for Get/Give/Grow Your Own Stuff. Gyos is an online community market that promotes locally used and hand crafted goods and services. From its philosophy to its practice, Gyos is an environmental, social, and buy-local business.

Local Ryan Logtenberg, an avid environmentalist, amateur economist, and computer nerd, along with his brother, has spent the last two years developing Gyos as tool to make communities most resilient and resourceful in hard economic times. “I love the Sunshine Coast”, says Ryan, “and I see its economic prosperity depending on two central things. One is the Sunshine Coast’s ability to bring in new business, the second is its ability to cycle money through the local economy as much as possible. If $20 cycles within a community 5 times through local transactions/buying locally, that’s $100 worth of prosperity”. Michael McLaughlin, Economic Development Coordinator of Gibsons and Area, is impressed by the Gyos concept particularly “its use of local resources for home construction initiatives. It is an example of local economics where local resources are used for local consumption, as opposed to importing,” says McLaughlin.

The Gyos site hosts a wide variety of products and services, such as books, clothes, event tickets, art, jobs, financing, real estate and more; and supports all types of commerce including buying, selling, trading, bartering, and donating. Gyos efficiently provides information but does not handle any transactions – erasing the middleman. Gyos is free and easy to use. The only ads that cost money to post are for real estate, but even these are affordable.

There is a special section of the website, that its owners are especially proud of. It is called the 5 Mile Diet. “The goal of the 5 Mile Diet”, says Ryan, “is to raise awareness about seasonal foods and then provide the tools the community needs to access them”. There is space to write about your produce, post photos, and also a map feature that allows you to pinpoint your location. “The Sunshine Coast has wonderful farms, avid gardeners, and overabundant fruit trees. If this food was bought, sold, traded, or donated amongst us, our community would benefit nutritionally, environmentally, and financially.” McLaughlin agrees: “The Gyos concept fits very well into regional food security”.

While the website is active and currently available for posting: www.gyos.ca, Gyos officially launches June 15th. Once up and running on the Sunshine Coast, the Gyos team is introducing it to surrounding communities, so that each small town and city is its own economic hub and can expand outward as needed.

For an interview with Ryan Logtenberg (Founder) or Nancy Roulston (Development Manager), please contact us at ryan@gyos.ca and nancy@gyos.ca respectively.