Vancouver’s newest sports team set to be announced

Good morning, 

Nate with you today. Hoping everyone had a fun, celebratory, and restful long weekend and that you didn’t miss us too much on Monday. 

We heard you loud and clear after Friday’s newsletter: readers find our city hall and park board coverage helpful and want more of it. We’re going to keep doing just that with a quick update on Tuesday’s council meeting, including the final debate and vote on the next phase of Jericho Lands planning. 

But first, we have an exciting sports story to discuss with Vancouver scoring a new team!

Let’s get into it. 

— Nate Lewis, Vancity Lookout

PS - If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider forwarding it to your friends. New to the Lookout? Sign-up for free. 

If you have a tip, lead, or story idea, reach out to Nate at [email protected]

WEATHER

Wednesday: 14 🌡️ 7 | ☀️

Thursday: 17 🌡️ 9 | ☀️

Friday: 18 🌡️ 7 | 🌤️

VANCOUVER NUMBERS

🗳️ $7.3 million: The estimated number of Canadians who voted in the federal election during advance polls, a record high, which represents a 25 per cent increase from advanced voting in 2021. [CBC] 

🛢️ 30: The number of oil tankers that entered Vancouver harbour in March, a new record for ship arrivals, as they’re accessing the Burnaby terminal of the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline. [Vancouver Sun]

SPORTS

Vancouver’s newest sports team set to be announced

What happened: Even though the Canucks missed out on the spring playoff dance, there’s great news in the Vancouver hockey world today. The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) is expected to announce Vancouver as the league’s seventh franchise at a downtown press conference later today. 

• The news was first reported last week by Patrick Johnston of Postmedia, who cited confirmation from an unnamed source. 

On Monday, the PWHL’s official online store temporarily – and seemingly inadvertently – posted a Vancouver crest and a note that read “PWHL expands to Vancouver. Join the excitement and grab your new team gear!” according to BIV.

Finding an arena: Nothing is set in stone, but multiple media reports and other clues suggest that Vancouver’s newest sports franchise may have its home in East Van. 

The Pacific Coliseum at the PNE – built in 1968 as part of a successful attempt to attract an NHL franchise to the city – was the home of the Canucks for 25 years, from 1970 to 1995.  

• The WHL’s Vancouver Giants also played there from 2001 to 2016, but the stadium doesn’t currently have a consistent hockey tenant. 

The Pacific Coliseum and the PNE are owned and governed by the City of Vancouver, and the city will have representatives participating in Wednesday’s news conference. 

• The news conference was announced by Laura Ballance Media Group, which counts the PNE as one their clients. 

What we heard: “I didn't think it would happen this soon,” Erica Olson said of Vancouver getting its own team. 

Olson is a former professional hockey player who played at Cornell University, in Sweden, and for four seasons with the Ottawa Raiders in the first iteration of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) in the early 2000s.  

• Olson moved to Vancouver in 2006 to study marine ecology while playing a final season of pro hockey for the WWHL’s Minnesota Whitecaps.  

“I had to kind of decide if I was gonna continue playing serious hockey or do my graduate studies,” Olson told Vancity Lookout. 

Playing for the love of the game was a common situation for many women’s hockey players until very recently. A player in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League recalls she wasn’t paid at all when she played in the early aughts, even shelling out her own money for gas and meals during road trips. Even in 2019, the second iteration of the NWHL was paying its top players a league maximum of $15,000 per season. 

“Playing in the NWHL we had some things provided to us, like living expenses. But it wasn't really the kind of thing that you could make a lot of money at…  so most of us had to supplement our income in other ways,” Olson described. 

A job that pays: “That has been a huge change, I think, because now it's a big focus of the PWHL to make sure people don't have to do that. Players are hockey players, and they're not having to have other jobs… that can raise the level of play so much. You can see how that's happening with the PWHL now,” Olson said, adding that this league is the culmination of a lot of effort and advocacy by players in the women’s game. 

• “In the last 10 to 15 years, all of these players have worked really hard to give voice to the need for that kind of [financial] support and that kind of shift in the game. And I think also seeing that more broadly in women's sports has been helpful too,” Olson said. 

“It’s been emotional, in such a great way, to see how this league has formed, the success of it, and to see the quality of play that can happen when you really get that type of financial and fan support.”

“So many people who have been a part of this sport for so long are kind of in awe, to see this really coming to fruition,” Olson shared. 

The league: Vancouver is poised to join Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Boston, Minnesota, and New York, the cities that host the PWHL’s original six franchises. 

The league and all its teams are owned by Mark and Kimbra Walter. Mark is also the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The league doesn’t have any plans to change their single-entity ownership model, a board member told the Athletic back in November. 

• While most sports leagues have individual team owners, there is a precedent for this sort of single-entity arrangement in North American sports with Major League Soccer.  

The PWHL is reportedly considering adding a second expansion franchise in addition to Vancouver – likely on the West Coast, given the eastward locations of the other clubs. Specifically, Seattle is being considered, but further expansion announcements are on hold for now, according to CBC. 

• The league received more than 20 proposals from interested parties trying to bring a team to their city, according to Canucks Army.

The criteria for selecting a franchise include considerations of city population, youth hockey participation, women’s hockey history, and – importantly – existing professional infrastructure, according to the Athletic.

Checking boxes: Vancouver hits the mark in a lot of those categories. Over 19,000 fans packed Rogers Arena in January for a one-off PWHL game between Toronto and Montréal. 

The sell-out attendance that night – which exceeded any Canucks game this year – is likely far higher than a permanent Vancouver team could expect on a regular basis. Still, it does demonstrate the appetite for a women’s team in the city. 

• As of late March, the PWHL was averaging about 7,360 fans per game, which was up 35 per cent compared to the league’s first year in operation. Average NHL attendance, including special events, was 17,541 this year. 

Olson, who was one of those thousands, said it was emotional to experience that degree of public recognition. “It was an unbelievable, speechless sort of feeling,” Olson said. 

“It made me feel so happy for those players, that they get to have this [recognition], and that all of those young players watching also have the opportunity to potentially have that,” Olson said.  

• Anecdotally, there seemed to be a large number of girls' hockey teams attending the game in January. 

A look back: In terms of history, the Vancouver Griffins—a short-lived professional women’s hockey team—played in New West from 2000 until 2003. Star Olympians like Cammi Granato, Shelley Looney, and Nancy Drolet played for the Griffins. 

• Granato is currently an assistant general manager with the Canucks. 

Home ice advantage: The Coliseum gives Vancouver a solid existing arena, with a capacity of 15,000. Meanwhile, Eight Rinks in Burnaby (now the bank-branded Barn) and Trout Lake Community Centre are some nearby options for practice rinks. 

“I'm just really excited to be able to go in-person and watch hockey,” Olson said, saying she watches far more women’s hockey than men’s hockey on TV (which itself is a fairly recent opportunity). 

“I'm not a person who goes out and watches a ton of Canucks games, but I definitely will with this team,” Olson said of Vancouver’s new PWHL team. 

• Olson’s biggest concern with the news is whether she’ll be able to get good tickets, she said. 

Important questions: Who will operate the team? Where will they get players from? How will the newly-formed team do facing more established rivals? How much fan and community support will they get? 

There’s a slew of questions yet to be answered, all of them interesting to the hockey nerds among us (guilty 🙋🏻) – but the most scrutinized, hotly-debated, and fun question is about the team’s name. 

We’ve provided a few options in our highly scientific, well-researched, legally-binding (of course) poll. Let us know which one you like best – or better yet, write in your own idea and we’ll feature our favourites in a future newsletter!

• For reference, the current team names are Fleet, Frost, Victoire, Sirens, Charge, and Sceptres.

DREAM HOME

While my dream home is featured in today’s Vancouver Guesser, your dream home might be this one.

A patio? Two bedrooms? Over 700 square feet? And at an affordable price? Yes, unicorns do exist.

This place has a lot going for it, especially the big outdoor patio. It’s also been recently renovated, so it looks a lot newer than you’d expect, along with a very nicely appointed kitchen for the size of the unit.

So much will this set you back? You’d be surprised…

THE AGENDA

😞 The body of a swimmer who drowned at Wreck Beach and was found a Third Beach last week has been identified as a 26-year-old Vancouver Community College student, according to a fundraiser set up by the man’s family. The Lifesaving Society of BC is advising caution in natural bodies of water and offering a few tips on how to help if someone’s struggling. [CBC, CityNews]

🛑 Flyers promoting racially-charged election propaganda – which say, in part, that Mark Carney will worsen so-called “systemic antiwhitism” and “catastrophic White erasure” – were distributed on cars in East Vancouver last week. The flyers link to the website of a prominent white nationalist influencer in the U.S. There have been previous hateful propaganda campaigns in the Lower Mainland referencing the same group. [Vancity Lookout, BurnabyNow] 

⛴️ A tugboat had to be dispatched to bring in a ferry full of passengers on Monday, after a BC Ferries boat suffered a mechanical failure mid-voyage. Two more sailings were cancelled as a result, before the ship was returned to service later that afternoon. [CBC]

🚧 The battered Jericho Pier looks to be almost fixed, with park board staff saying the repairs — which began in December – should be finished later this spring. The pier has been closed since January 2022. [Urbanized]

🛴 Good news for anyone who’s enjoyed cruising around East Van on an e-scooter – the city, through their partnership with Lime, is expanding the e-scooter network to downtown Vancouver. This is the next step in growing it into a city-wide program, Mayor Ken Sim said. New stations have also recently been added in Mount Pleasant, expanding the network beyond the trial area of Hastings-Sunrise and Grandview-Woodland. [COV, Lime]  

Outside Vancouver 

👀 A B.C. union is calling on federal parties to overhaul Canada’s temporary foreign worker program. They say the program, which allows employers to offer low wages to address skilled labour shortages, enables the abuse of foreign workers while suppressing wages for domestic workers. The three biggest parties all say it’s a necessary program, but only the NDP has put forward a plan to address the significant human rights concerns. [The Tyee]

CITY HALL

Council approves next step in Jericho Lands project

What happened: City council unanimously approved the Jericho Lands Official Development Plan (ODP), meaning the plan for the area proposed by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (MST) partnership will be enshrined as a city by-law, lending more certainty and accountability to the project. 

• That certainty will make it easier for MST to get financing for the project, council heard from project representatives. Meanwhile, things like the minimum inclusion rates for social housing units (2,600), among other public benefits, will have to be met. 

The details: The ODP isn’t a rezoning, the city clarified. That means some aspects of the plan could eventually change, but key requirements included in the ODP would not. Council will still vote on phased rezoning applications as the project progresses, but that process won’t include public hearings. 

• “However, the public will continue to be notified and can comment on all rezoning applications. Following a rezoning, the public will also have an opportunity to provide feedback as part of the subsequent development permit process,” the city said.

Council perspectives: Three councillors and Mayor Ken Sim were absent for the vote, but the rest of city council all voted in favour of moving forward with the project plan, with councillors across parties hitting many of the same notes in their final comments. 

Green Councillor Pete Fry spoke to the big changes proposed in the project through a historical lens, as a form of reconciliation. 

“When we think about the change that it’s bringing [to the area]... I think it behooves us to think back even 100 years ago to when there was a significant displacement of the Indigenous people who were here… looking back at what the change must have been like for the people who were on these lands first and [who] experienced these momentous changes with English lawns and houses being constructed on lands that were hunting ground and wilderness, and what a change that must have felt like to them,” Fry said. 

• ABC Councillor Lisa Dominato said she heard the public’s concern around the impact of change in the area. “Concerns over the height of the towers, the build-form, how it’s going to change the landscape and the views… but we need to recognize that we need to adjust to the times,” Dominato said. 

ABC Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung said the development is a welcome change. “I think it brings new energy and new life into these neighbourhoods and I think that is a positive. It’s about building for future generations” she said, referencing young people who can’t afford to live in West Point Grey and the high vacancy rate along the West 10th Avenue business area. 

“We don’t often have a large peice of land where we can actually do [a master plan rather than ad hoc spot rezoning approach],” Kirby-Yung said, making the point that an ODP is a good approach from a land use and city planning perspective. It will give neighbours more certainty about what’s to come in the next generation, she added. 

What’s next: MST can now apply for rezoning to build near the top of the hill near Trimble Park and West Point Grey Academy. This will be the first of at least four phases, with different parts of the site being developed at different times

• The first rezoning will take three to four years to complete, followed by an additional three years of construction – with the first units expected to be available in 2032, according to the Vancouver Sun. 

ARTS GUIDE

Performance

Dance Nation is taking over the Drive’s York Theatre for an extended run, starting today April 23. None of the cast in this Pulitzer Prize-nominated drama are dancers, as the Georgia Straight cheekily points out, but that’s part of the play’s youthful playfulness, says artistic director Mindy Parfitt. Tickets ($20+, sliding scale PWYC available for some performances). 

The performance is part of the Cultch’s Warrior Festival, which includes three other shows you can still catch over the next two+ weeks. More info. 

Next week, the Dance Centre is putting on a series of performances, workshops and events on April 27 and 29 in celebration of International Dance Day. A mix of free and sliding scale events. Schedule and more info.  

Movies 

An absurdly fun, profound, and strikingly pertinent film, Secret Mall Apartment documents the successful creation of a 750 sq. ft. home in a Rhode Island mall by a small group of artists who had been displaced by the mall’s development. Incredibly, they were able to remain undiscovered for four years in what evolved from a practical joke into a personal act of resistance and reclaiming space. Tickets $14. 

VIFF’s series on the genius of Gena Rowlands celebrates the influential American actress’s versatility and star power with screenings of eight of her top films. Tickets and more info. 

The Rio has a barn-burnin’ trio of favourites of tap, with Best In Show, Miss Congeniality, and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior going back-to-back-to-back this Friday night. Tickets $15. 

Art

Umbrage is a vulnerable, intimate, and satirical exhibit that uses the concept of shade/shadow and storytelling to reoccupy multiply-colonized times and spaces. The newly-opened three-artist exhibition is showing at Centre A on Keefer until June 7. 

Multimedia artist Kevin Day’s project, the medium is the environment, seeks to visualize the environmental impact of our digitized lives through the use of video projection and fog. Coming up next month (May 15-23) at VIVO Media Arts Centre. 

VANCOUVER GUESSER

Well done, as usual, folks. Most of you, including a friendly park board commissioner, correctly guessed last week’s photo was of China Creek North. 

For this week’s Guesser, I’m resolving to challenge y’all a bit more.  To that end, can you tell me what neighbourhood this absurdly cute homestead (with a massive backyard overlooking a creek) is in? 

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• Is this the best no-fuss Chinese food restaurant in downtown Vancouver? Read the review + subscribe to our exclusive restaurant review newsletter. [Vancity Lookout]

• A local entrepreneur has stepped up to help fund the loss of money to school lunch programs in Vancouver. The reason? She was a refugee, and her family relied on food banks when they arrived. [CBC]

• There wasn’t much smoke at this week’s unsanctioned 4/20 event at Sunset Beach. [CityNews]

• A docuseries called Not Your Butter Chicken, looking at South Asian stories in Western Canada? Sounds great! [Straight]

• Stopping in at Richmond Brighouse? Then these restaurants and cafes are worth a visit. [Vancity Lookout]