Photograph by Gil Biderman IAN’S 2009 Year in pictures Early in 2009 I woke up at my good friends - Marci and Mark Peterson in Yelm, Washington. … Not to mention their precocious and exuberant dogs Mark and I work together on projects involving large- format cinema theatres. In January, my good friends Sue and Joe McDonald visited from Pennsylvania - and we had lunch at the Teahouse in Stanley Park. Poor Joe had laryngitis, so when he took me to a Vancouver Canucks hockey game, he wasn’t able to holler. Dinner at Semiahmoo, Washington… I spent a few days of R&R at a wonderful, quiet resort - Semiahmoo, Washington - and was joined for dinner one night by a long-lost friend, Dr. Rachelle Herdman - who practices medicine and is a naturopathic doctor in Bellingham. Semiahmoo Scenes… 1 The first of many workshops and consulting sessions in conjunction with expansion planning for Telus World of Science Edmonton - presided over by CEO George Smith. George has asked me to be Project Manager. Here, White Oak Associates and Aldrich/Pears help us with preliminary programme planning - with a major distraction - the much anticipated and welcome inauguration of US President Barrack Obama. In the crisp Edmonton mid-winter, I take an invigorating walk around Coronation Park - and contemplate where my museum, planetarium and science centre career began - at the Queen Elizabeth Planetarium. The building will be 50 years old in 2010. Our friend and colleague, John Jacobsen of White Oak presents some preliminary aspects of what will become the Master Plan for the new science centre - to the Board, staff and Foundation, before putting final touches on an ambitious expansion project that will include an innovative digital visual theatre, a 3D IMAX, a science & technology learning and dialogue centre, early childhood development centre and the Canadian Arctic and Circumpolar Science Centre. George does not like to think small. Spectacular sights on the way to Salt Lake City: Technical meetings at Evans & Sutherland for Science North Sudbury - with architect Bill Chomik (foreground), Nicole Chiasson and Jeff Baron; standing behind us, Scott Niskach, E&S. 2 February, 2009 < Visiting the Mormon Tabernacle Nicole and I visiting with Mike Murray, Clark Planetarium is Salt Lake - and stopping at the marvelous Utah Museum of Fine Arts > Back in Vancouver, my friend Gil Biderman takes this remarkable photo of me using my barely legal astronomical green laser pointer. There is an amazingly bright lunar halo gracing the cool, February night sky. Gil and I regularly attend monthly meetings of the Vancouver Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I wound up with two black eyes in February after a bad fall - swimming and working out without anything to eat for several hours. A lesson learned (maybe). There were lots of suggestions for a story to explain this sorry sight. One of my favourites was: “Ah, this is nothing - you should see the other guy.” 3 My son-in-law, Mike Erskine-Kellie (married to daughter Susan) visits Vancouver on business in February - and I show him the sights (part of a relentless, but so far unsuccessful campaign to get them to move to the West Coast). Back in Edmonton, a group from Sky-Skan including Steve Savage, Mike Sperry and Annette Sotheran-Barnett join with us in the initial planning for MASAV - the Microscopic and Sub-Atomic Visualization project - an innovative programme that will help us launch the new Digital Visualization Theatre. At a regular meeting of the Themed Attraction Association of Canada, Chris Au (fellow board member) kibitzes with a camera; others are Sheila Hill, Brian Rudko and Doug Munday (Vancouver Aquarium). > MARCH, 2009 < An unsual production of Verdi’s Rigoletto - staged by Vancouver Opera, attended with some opera pals. We also attended some of the marvelous Met Opera HD casts. Looking in on good friend Natalie Drache’s birthday party with a bunch of her eclectic pals, including Holly Burke - playing a mean flute. 4 Off to Toronto for the annual conference of the Canadian Museums Association. Phil Aldrich, Catherine Rockandel and I conducted a workshop on creative partnerships for not-for-profit organizations. Of course, the most urgent reason for going to Toronto was granddaughter Daisy Kurelek’s 9th birthday - celebrated with her admiring friends and neighbours. Between Holly and Daisy, there have been 21 birthdays, and I haven’t missed one of them yet. Holly’s Hockey… Granddaughter Holly is quite the hockey player (Oakville Hornets). After a game and hot chocolate, we gather outside the arena - me, (Nana) Adrienne, Holly and Holly’s super dad, Peter Kurelek. Dashing back to Vancouver in time for another workshop at APA for the Edmonton project - then Mark & Marci Peterson, Robert & Elizabeth Ballantyne and I hike across Bowen Island. 5 APRIL, 2009… Approaching the world-famous HOUSTON Astrodome — on a truly unusual consulting gig. Harris County wants to re-purpose the famous but now decommissioned sports stadium as a major STEM Centre - interpreting science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Thanks to a suggestion by my friend Ken Miller, I am now working with architects Guy Jackson and Gary Wilson - as well as senior County officials to analyze the various options. Thanks, Ken - I think!) Guy Jackson (right) took us to a beautiful, prize-winning urban waterfall he designed at a medical centre in Houston. A few weeks later we re- convened with fellow consultants Phil Hettema, George Wiktor, Gordon Linden, John Zukowsky and Ryan Wyatt to drill down on a number of exciting possibilities for the proposed STEM Centre. Houston Sunset While I was away in Houston, my good friend Bill Barkley’s wonderful wife, Gayle, suddenly and unexpectedly died. It was a devastating loss to Bill and to all of us who knew and admired her. … Landing at Victoria Harbour for a visit with Bill. I gave him this favourite picture I took of the two of them looking lovingly at each other right after Bill had been honoured by the British Columbia Museums Association. 6 Yet another Edmonton workshop - APA’s Tim Lindsay and architect Donna Clare (Cohos-Evamy) drill down on the new science centre programme parameters. Right - one of Phil Aldrich’s relationship diagrams. Early one morning (see the rising sun reflected in the windows of Edmonton International Airport) I groggily drive John Jacobsen, Jeanie Stahl and Victor Becker out for their all-day flight back east - where the real work begins, putting the final touches on the Master Plan for the expanded Telus World of Science Edmonton. … A Bridge Almost Too Far Back in Vancouver in time to participate in the ten kilometre Sun Run with 100,000 other crazies. I come in about the middle of the pack, and my feet hurt for a week. At the end of April, a TAA special behind- the-scenes look at Vancouver’s brand new Trade and Convention Centre. 7 The Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. George Smith came out to inspect the facility as part of our research into a science and technology dialogue centre for Edmonton. MAY, 2009 — I am in San Francisco at the marvelous new California Academy of Sciences for a major astronomy visualization conference hosted by my friend Ryan Wyatt. Astronomy is an interesting enough science in its abstract form, but the new digital visualizations that transport the observer into the middle of the most dramatic space phenomena make it not only interesting, but thrilling - and informative. MACs outnumber PCs 3 to 1. Visualization Tunnel Amazing lobby circus act Back to Edmonton… for the “Meet the North Conference” - covering topics of interest regarding the Canadian Arctic, and the three northern regions - Nunavut, Yukon and Northwest Territories. Our friend and collaborator, Dr. Andrew Greenshaw from the University of Alberta was one of the presenters. He is helping Telus World of Science Edmonton with the planning for the Canadian Circum- polar Science Centre - first of its kind in the world. An unexpected coincidence… I usually get seated next to boring aluminum sash & door salesmen, but on an Edmonton to London overnight flight, my seat-mate was an amazing Lebanese woman, Nahida… We talked incessantly for nine and a half hours. 8 I attended the British Association of Planetaria conference at my old client’s home institution, the Royal Observatory Greenwich. (l to r - an evening pub crawl, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, friend John Brown and two revered amateur astronomers and story-tellers, Ray & Josie Worthy.) Blackheath Village - where I stay - at the charming Clarendon Hotel - a 30 minute walk to Royal Observatory. In Blackheath, I met with one of its illustrious citizens, Dr. Duncan Copp - an astronomer and accomplished filmmaker - who produced In the Shadow of the Moon, a captivating look at the lives of the Apollo era astronauts. > < I took in a special show at the British Library - celebrating the 500th anniversary of the ascending to the throne of King Henry V111. What a jerk. < Dr. Kevin Fewster, Director of the National Maritime Museum in his office; we had lunch in the museum’s magnificent courtyard. 9 Magnificent view of Greenland on the way back home. An evening of wonderful harp music at the Deep Cove home of Elizabeth Volpe … organized as a fund-raiser for SEVA Canada by Michel and JoAn Maurer < Part of the SEVA Executive Committee (of which I am part)… Executive Director Penny Lyons looks on while Susan Erdmann shows off another big donation towards blindness relief and prevention in Nepal, Tibet, Guatemala and Tanzania. Other fellow board members pictured are Michel Maurer, Tom Voss and David Hardouin (Board Chair). JUNE 2009… At a gala event hosted by George Smith for famed aviation innovator Burt Rutan - Kathy Springer kibitzes with Franklin Loehde, an old school chum from Edmonton.