WEDNESDAY
January 7 2015
Vol. 106 No. 01
OPINION 10
Geller wants to party FEATURE 12
2015 in the Stars STATE OF THE ARTS 16
Public dancers at PuSh
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Fitness a HIIT in 2015
Megan Stewart
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A worker finishes the cedar shingle roof covering the new aboriginal carving pavilion behind Britannia secondary school. PHOTO JENNIFER GAUTHIER
Carving pavilion capped with call for inclusive city New facility should be part of broader strategy for aboriginal people, says Britannia board member
Wawmeesh G. Hamilton wawmeesh@shaw.ca
As workers put the finishing touches on a new aboriginal carving pavilion behind the ice rink at Britannia secondary school, Britannia Community Centre board member says the facility needs to be part of a broader strategy to engage aboriginal people at all the city’s community centres. “It’s a great idea, and the people who spearheaded it are to be commended for their efforts,” said Scott Clark, the society’s only aboriginal board member. “To take the next step, it needs dedicated programing to sustain it.” Carving is part of aboriginal people’s cultural DNA, Clark said, so there should
be no shortage of interest in using the facility. “You walk around the neighbourhood and you see a lot of aboriginal carvers sitting on the street doing their thing. Those guys all have stories to tell, too.” According to the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study, Vancouver is home to more than 40,000 aboriginal people. Those people don’t just reside in the city’s East Side but live in each of the 27 neighbourhoods that have a community centre, Clark said. “The pavilion at Grandview Woodland is a good first step, but that step has to be part of a broader strategy that all centres need to engage and include aboriginal residents,” Clark said. A broader strategy would include aboriginal people on community centre boards, staffing and in program development, he said. Workers are finishing the carving pavilion’s 1,400-square-foot cedar shingle roof, which has been constructed to resemble a cedar hat. All that remains is water services to be hooked up. Construction of the $400,000 facility started in fall 2013 and is expected to be
finished in January 2015. Pending final inspection by the city, a grand opening is tentatively scheduled for February. “It’s nice to replace a dull parking lot with a facility such as this that will have a profound impact on the neighbourhood,” said Cynthia Low, executive director for Britannia Community Services Centre Society. The construction costs were underwritten with a combination of municipal and federal money as well as private donations. The new wooden structure replaces a tent that was used as a carving shed for more than eight years. Once the pavilion is completed, the city and Vancouver School Board will split the $12,000 cost to operate and maintain the facility, a VSB report noted. The facility’s location was chosen because of the high population of aboriginal people who live in the area, Low said. According to the Grandview-Woodland community profile, 27,297 people live in the area, 2,729 of which are aboriginal. The pavilion is part of the city’s reconciliation initiative adopted in 2013. Continued on page 9
To stay fit or get fitter in 2015, you might find yourself hula dancing, bouncing on a tiny trampoline or HIITing, a fast-paced repeating workout that many Canadian fitness professionals say will remain the most popular form of exercise for another year. Characterized by short bursts of hard exercise, with HIIT or high-intensity interval training, “You get more bang for your buck,” said Tara King, the founder of HIIT Fitness. According to nearly 2,000 fitness instructors who responded to the first national Canadian Fitness Professional trends survey in December, HIIT was their choice as the most effective form of exercise popular in gyms today. Second on the canfitpro list was functional fitness, a form of exercise that uses movements to prepare the body for everyday activities like lifting groceries and climbing stairs. Third was exercise specific to adults over 65, a growing aspect of the fitness industry that has trainers seeking more knowledge about senior health and age-appropriate workouts. HIIT topped the list, however, because it can generate significant and noticeable results, said the vice-president of canfitpro, Rod Macdonald. In one of King’s 30-minute classes, she typically sets up five circuits of challenging but simple exercises like burpees or jumping lunges and also incorporates weights. Other workouts — like CrossFit and Tabata, which is a demanding minutes-long circuit developed at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo in the ’90s — embrace aspects of HIIT, and King emphasized the importance of variety to keep the mind and body engaged and challenged. “Because your body will tend to plateau, you can get accustomed to it and you won’t see changes in your body anymore. We try to be innovative all the time,” she said. “It’s been around for a while but is becoming more mainstream.” In Vancouver, Urban Fitness and Tactix gyms specialize in these kinds of workouts while many other fitness centres have added classes to their larger rotation. HIIT Fitness offers classes in Vancouver at a studio on Beatty Street. What you won’t see at dozens of gyms around Vancouver, however, is the barefoot Polynesian rhythms of Kim Price’s Hot Hula class. The low-impact dance workout isolates larger muscle groups and increases strength and definition to the core, said the instructor with Move Grove Fitness. Continued on page 17