GATHER | Web Summit Vancouver 2026 x Global Tech Conference

"We meet at a critical moment in the history of technology."

Physician/author Dr. Gabor Maté and Twitch political streamer Hasan Piker

Waterfront—(May 11 to 14, 2026) For the second year, Web Summit Vancouver's annual multi-day global conference, known as the "Olympics of Tech," gathered 20,235 attendees (up from 15,727 in 2025) spread across three levels of the Vancouver Convention Centre, once again hosted by the titular Dublin-based technology events company.

SCENE | Mitch and Murray and Kelli Ogmundson Do No 'Harm'

"Must be all the scissoring!"

Photo credit | Shimon Karmel

Fairview Slopes—Starring the appealing former Animal Control actress Kelli Ogmundson, Mitch and Murray Productions stages the North American premiere of British playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell's gripping but deeply unsettling one-woman play. Harm is a powerful solo performance that requires the proper stamina and emotional range to truly express our toxic culture of digital discomfort and warped social realities through a single person's experiences.

WEEKENDER | Vancouver International Wine Festival 2026

"Discover a world of wine."

Waterfront—(March 12 and 13, 2026) Wine lovers gathered together once more for the 47th annual Vancouver Wine Festival and its week-long celebration of alcoholic grape drink-related festivities. Tens of thousands of VIWF attendees wined and dined themselves while attending countless seminars, minglers, pairing meals, and signature tasting events across eight days of fun, known as "the largest wine festival in the Americas."

SPOTLIGHT | Maddy Kelly Live x Just For Laughs x Fox Cabaret

"Consent is not a big part of tickling, historically."

His Parents Never Taught Him

Mount Pleasant—(February 18, 2026) Vancouver's very own Maddy Kelly, the now New York City-transplanted stand-up comedian, came back to town for another reliably sharp stage performance. Her latest set of jokes mostly delighted the familiar hometown crowd inside the Fox Cabaret music venue located at the nexus of Main Street and Kingsway as part of the city's annual eleven-day Just for Laughs Vancouver comedy festival.

SCENE | 'West Van Story' Sweeps the Spirit of 'East Van Panto'

"You're just jealous, because I was an early developer."

Dawn Petten, Tresha Thamilchelvan, Izel de Lara & Ivy Charlies / Photo credit | Emily Cooper

Commercial Drive—One of my favourite annual traditions of leftist satirical musical propaganda (complimentary), East Van Panto, is back for another year of shared theatrical joy. Theatre Replacement's latest holiday stage production, presented by The Cultch, returned to the York Theatre for its lucky thirteenth edition of love, laughter, and low-income housing.

VIFF 2025 | 10 Most Anticipated Films (You Should See)

"This is a festival built on passion, and it shows."

Image | Zak Design Studio

VIFF 2025—(August 27, 2025) Fall movie season is just around the corner. This means the city's eleven-day arthouse cinematic showcase, the 44th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, is almost upon us when it returns in a new timeslot at the beginning of next month. Make a plan for VIFF's yearly buffet of multimedia entertainment programming, featuring hundreds of local, national, and international films from across the globe, screened in celebration of contemporary filmmaking.

WEEKENDER | PNE Fair 2025 x Hastings Park x East Van

Hastings–Sunrise—(August 14 and 20, 2025) For its 115th year, the 2025 PNE Fair is still trying to make everyone happy. This past weekend, East Vancouver's annual late summer tradition on the Pacific National Exhibition's festival fairgrounds in Hastings Park opened up once again for two weeks of hot summer fun for the whole family.

WANDER | Douglas Coupland x Suite X x Faimont Pacific Rim

"I'm very much a product of the late twentieth century."

Coal Harbour—(July 23, 2025) It was a real treat to tour acclaimed Vancouver-based visual artist and novelist Douglas Coupland's latest design collaboration, Suite X, located inside the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in the Corner Suite on the newly renovated Fairmont Gold floor lounge, overlooking the scenic Vancouver Waterfront.

WANDER | Lego x 'Artemis Space Adventure' x Science World x False Creek

"Think like NASA engineers, problem-solve like scientists, and dream like explorers."

False Creek—(June 25, 2025) Experience Science World's brand new, out-of-this-world featured interactive exhibition, Artemis Space Adventure with Lego Bricks, a transformative display of space travel to the Moon and beyond, employing the popular interlocking Danish construction toys.

SCREEN | VHS Nostaglia – Renting Something from 'Videoheaven'

"Video provides the means to invent a past in order to live in the present."

Cinema Conservancy / Stranger Things

Productive independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry examines the cultural impact of 1980-90s video rental shops in his extended film essay, Videoheaven, narrated by actress Maya Hawke, who notably portrayed a video clerk herself in season four of the popular '80s-set television series Stranger Things. By assembling video rental depictions in movies throughout cinematic history, Perry recounts the past's media infrastructure and modes of distribution through the medium of film itself, as inspired by film professor Daniel Herbert's non-fiction book, Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store.

GATHER | Web Summit Vancouver 2025 x Global Tech Conference

"Vancouver is one of the world's most beautiful cities, with a flourishing tech community."

NBA champions Metta World Peace and JaVale McGee

Waterfront—(May 30, 2025) It sure felt like almost everyone was at the inaugural Web Summit Vancouver multi-day global conference, replacing Collision Conference's five-year run in Toronto. Long considered the "Olympics of Tech" and hosted by the Dublin-based technology events company, the gathering took over three levels of the Vancouver Convention Centre for as many days at the tail end of May.

SCREEN | Hiring A Chinese 'Mistress Dispeller' x DOXA 2025

"When a fish takes the bait, your heart will beat with the fish."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Director Elizabeth Lo documents the eponymous Chinese phenomenon of wives hiring professionals to save their crumbling marriages through one particular middle-aged couple in Mistress Dispeller. How she follows the raw, unfiltered emotions, feelings, and motivations of these strangers is nothing short of fascinating.

SCENE | A Historic Royal Visit – Arts Club Cares for 'Casey and Diana'

"This is like the homosexual version of the Make-A-Wish Foundation!"

Casey House / October 25, 1991

South Granville—Arts Club Theatre Company stages North Vancouver playwright Nick Green's acclaimed, fictionized AIDS crisis dramedy, Casey and Diana, inspired by the late Princess Diana's historic 1991 Toronto visit to Casey House, Canada's first freestanding hospice caring for people (primarily gay men at the time) dying from the HIV/AIDS virus. A real tearjerker of a stage play that premiered at the 2023 Stratford Festival, it's a powerful tale that lives up to the actual impact the event had, destigmatizing the epidemic and humanizing those afflicted.

GATHER | Baiting Ziwe x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I rarely get asked to do [racism] p*rn."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(March 13, 2025) Talented mononymous Nigerian-American late night comedian/interviewer and Black Friend author Ziwe (Fumudoh) brought her stylishly hilarious insights to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's accidentally hyper topical ongoing speaker series on the politics of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.

GATHER | Ramy Youssef x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I wasn't gonna mention the whole fifty-first state thing."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(February 27, 2025) Award-winning Egyptian-American stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, and director Ramy Youssef casually captivated a full audience inside the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's second-year speaker series, discussing the topic of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.

WEEKENDER | Vancouver International Wine Festival 2025

"The wine world is here."

Waterfront—(March 1, 2025) Once again, the city welcomed the wine world during the 46th annual Vancouver International Wine Festival for its usual eight days of end-of-winter, grape-soaked fun. Thousands of VIWF attendees wined and dined themselves at countless seminars, minglers, pairing meals, and signature tastings.

SCENE | Arts Club Deposits 'Primary Trust' x Granville Island Stage

"I miss wanting to win."

Celia Aloma and Andrew Broderick / Photo credit | Mark Halliday

Granville Island—Arts Club Theatre Company brings celebrated African-American playwright Eboni Booth's 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning off-Broadway stage play Primary Trust to Vancouver for its Canadian premiere. It stars Andrew Broderick as the Mai Tai-sipping Kenneth (a role originated by William Jackson Harper), a thirty-eight-year-old suburban bookstore clerk who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after being laid off.

WEEKENDER | The Downside Live x Just For Laughs x Biltmore Cabaret

"It's about all the weird ways hamsters die."

Photo credit | Andrew Kelly/NYT

Mount Pleasant—(February 17, 2025) On a crisp winter Family Day long weekend ("When's Joy Day?") night out, I gathered, amidst a jovial audience, to witness the energetic New York-based, Italian-Jewish-American stand-up comedian co-host a live edition of his semi-popular The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi podcast alongside fellow Uncle Function sketch group sidekick, Broadway performer Russell Daniels, on stage at the Biltmore Cabaret in the middle of the annual ten-day Just for Laughs Vancouver comedy festival.

SCREEN | Recollections of a Vietnamese Rebellion – 'New Wave' Culture

"I was chasing a story about a bunch of Vietnamese-American rebels."

Photo credit | Yudi Echevarria/Angel City Press

Chinese-Vietnamese-American director Elizabeth Ai explores the immigrant experience through music in her fun but meaningful documentary, New Wave. All about the influence of the titular genre of music and its effects on the pop culture of the Vietnamese diaspora emerging from 1980s Southern California, the film takes an interesting approach to dissecting the unspoken collective intergenerational trauma of these children of refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

SCENE | 'East Van Panto' Takes 'Robin Hood' Back from the Rich

"This is Lululemon Lake now!"

Jason Sakaki / Photo credit | Emily Cooper

Commercial Drive—It's that time of year again. East Van Panto, Theatre Replacement's wackiest annual holiday stage tradition presented by The Cultch, returned to the York Theatre for its twelfth edition, featuring a very merry band of animal misfits (the "Merry-Thems") in a hyper-localized, joyful musical twist on the outlaw folklore of Robin Hood.