EVENT WRITING | Vancouver European Festival.

2018: I cut my teeth as a journalist writing little pieces like this.

Glorified listings, really, but I was glad to be getting any sort of byline or credit. Unfortunately, not everyone at the newspaper was happy to see me getting published at all. I was a 23 year old with no J-school education. Newspaper staffers are traditionally mean, grumpy, and often experiencing burn out. I was not technically a writer, so I know that some of my older coworkers saw me as a “scab”. And I was completing writing work on the side, for free, while working a completely different day job. I certainly see why this was problematic, in retrospect. As a result, copy editors began to ignore my work. My pieces began to go to press riddled with typos and errors, which you can see in the published version of this piece. In my mind, this rendered them useless for my portfolio of clips.

Event listings, even longer listings like this, are of course, not real writing.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this kind of thing for a number of reasons. These pieces gave me practice, and the people I chose to feature were always so grateful. Community organizations rely heavily to this day on the benevolence of the press to promote their events. The pieces were also supposed to be based on text straight out of the press releases. The events hadn’t happened yet, and therefore couldn’t be reviewed. Pieces like this one appeared among other, much shorter listing. This is important to note because during my time at the Vancouver Sun, I was explicitly told that this was the way it was supposed to be done.

In about a year, I was fired (from a different job, more on that later). the fact that I sometimes used press release text in a listing such as this one was labelled plagiarism, and I was told it was one of the reasons for my dismissal.

Anyway, enjoy the following filler piece on the Vancouver European Festival. Try not to fall asleep.

The seventh annual European Festival will take place Saturday at the Scandinavian Community Centre in Burnaby.

More than 20 countries will participate in family-oriented events featuring food, drink, music, dance, elaborate costumes, children’s entertainment, youth activities and an extensive European marketplace, all under one roof.

Begun in 1998 in response to a perceived lack of European cultural activities for Vancouverites, the festival has more than doubled in size since its inception. Last year alone, 5,000 tickets were sold and the festival remains the only one of its type in the province.

The official opening is at 10:30 a.m., with festivities starting at 11.

Highlights include the exhibition area, where each participating country will display information and artefacts relating to its culture, the food tent, where “ethnic” and speciality foods will be sold, and the large stage presentation area, where performances will take place from noon until 8 p.m. Following the daytime festivities, a German dance band, S-Bahn, will take the stage until midnight.

A supervised children’s program with games, face painting, puppet shoes, and other activities means whole families can enjoy this unique festival.

The Scandinavian Community Centre is located at 6540 Thomas St., Burnaby. More information is available online. –Jennifer Selk

A version of this piece was originally published in the Vancouver Sun, in May 2004. See below.

Published May, 2004 in The Vancouver Sun.

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