I was born, raised and educated in Vancouver and in fact have lived most of my life in Metro Vancouver. I say this because I know many of you do not live in Vancouver and wouldn’t unless your very life depended upon it. I know this because I lived several years in Kamloops being privileged to serve as her MLA for 5 years. As a devout convert I soon learned that Vancouver was to other areas of the province as Toronto is to Vancouver. I got as annoyed as anyone at the perpetual snobbishness. I once received a general letter from the Law Society to the “up country” bar; I sent my reply to the “down country” bar.

Having said that, plenty of people from without visit Vancouver for many reasons including sports. I have another reason for you to visit.

We all took a couple of Shakespeare plays in high school – mine were Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar with Macbeth coming in University. Like most young people I was fascinated by them but with the exception of seeing Midsummer’s Nights Dream with my Mom when I was a kid I, didn’t see any plays. What I did see was the famous films of Hamlet and Henry V with Laurence Olivier. Thus, like many of you I’m sure, I knew some Shakespeare, had trouble with the language, recognized many Shakespeare quotes and secretly wanted to learn more. And here’s where Vancouver comes in.

In 1990 Shakespearean actor and director Christopher Gaze founded Bard on the Beach which has become Western Canada’s largest professional Shakespeare festival. It’s held  every year in open-ended tents on the waterfront in Vanier Park in Kitsilano and runs from late May until late September presenting 4 plays a season. And here’s a grabber – there are 79,000 possible tickets available and for 2007 every single one was purchased! This is truly amazing when you think about it.

This segues into another fact – during my latter days broadcasting one of my seasonal specials was Shakespeare presented by Paul Budra, a professor of English at SFU. He would have all glued to their radios as he described each play. It was easily the most popular feature I ever did.

I am not a Shakespearian but have seen him played in Stratford-Upon- Avon and, many, many times, at the Globe in London. The more I see it, the better I am at picking up the lingo of the 16th century and the more I enjoy the entertainment.

So I say to you – give haughty prideful Vancouver hell at all times but do come to Bard on the Beach next year and see Twelfth Night, King Lear, The Tempest, and Titus Andronicus. God willing, Wendy and I will be there! And I nearly forgot, the tickets are less than $30.