When the lights go out in the city

When the lights go out in the city you may feel a bit disorientated. Your morning ritual of repeatedly hitting the snooze button is replaced with a periodic glance at the cell phone before you catch a couple more winks. You get dressed in the dark and make breakfast to candlelight wondering if the power will come back on while you're at work, or if you’ll return to a refrigerator full of spoiled food. You arrive at work, turn on all the lights and get some coffee going only to realize you are out of coffee and forgot your wallet at home. So you walk back home which is only ten minutes away to grab your wallet. Of course you don’t bring your umbrella with you and on the way back it starts to rain hard. Welcome to my morning.

For the second time in less than two months the power has gone out on our street. I can only attribute it to the construction occurring in our neighbourhood. Two brand new condominium projects are going up around the corner in a city that has seen non-stop development in the last five years with no end in sight. For those of you not living in Vancouver and have never been here, our great city is going through a massive boom. Move over Alberta here comes BC! There are brand new projects ranging from new bridges and housing projects to an Olympic village and a new sky train route from the airport to downtown. With the Olympics only four years away, more than 20 billion dollars is being invested in new construction in Vancouver, which may bring more of you from across the country moving to our amazing city, as there seems to be more work than workers for all of these plans.

Last night, filmmaker Keli Westgate held a meeting for the Plant This Seed documentary that she is developing. Dig Deep Films in association with the Ace Film Company and the Phreeagent Creative Group will be producing the feature length documentary about the Canadian Hemp industry – a first of its kind in Canada. Keli heads to Toronto at the end of the month to attend the Hot Docs International Film Festival to plant seeds in the minds of broadcasters and investors. This summer she will hit the road with her crew to continue filming with a cross-country tour stopping to meet with the pioneers of an industry that had disappeared for 60 years.

We are now in the middle of our funding drive that will take us into July, as we get ready to hit the road. Sponsorship packages will be delivered to all interested parties who wish to take part in this great Canadian film project. We are putting out a call to all of our friends, family, neighbours, business owners and philanthropists to raise enough funds to finance the next leg of our production. We encourage you to contact us to find out more information on how you can get involved. We are also planning some fund raising events to take place in the upcoming months, more details to follow soon.

This has been a dream of Keli’s for quite a few years, since she first discovered all of the amazing properties of the hemp plant. Since she introduced me to the heaps of information and research about hemp it was a no-brainer to be involved with this film. Other phreeagent members have also come aboard; Jas Atwal has been creating logo concepts for the film, Dorian Leslie will be working on the website and animations in the film, Michael Campitelli aka Calamalka, will be providing the score to the film. Keli will also hook up with photographer Steve Carty when she is in Toronto for some new publicity photos.

It has been a wild journey and we are very excited with the progress and amazing support we have found from everyone. We hope everyone can just dig a little deeper, jump on board and contribute their support to this great project. Please contact us at keli@plantthisseed.com for more information and let us know about any other great ideas you may have to support the film. Thank you.

Happy Easter weekend Lydia, Steve and Derek!!

This has been another Observation from the Island.

p.s. Feel free to leave a comment here at the blog. Let me know if you are enjoying the Observations!

Peace.