For as long as there's been a West Vancouver, families have been gathering at Dundarave Beach to play, cast a net, a line or a crab trap, or jump off the peer at high tide into bracing salt water that on a good summer might reach a balmy 19˚ C.  (No chance of that, alas, this wet July as we swim through frigid sheets of February hanging in the sea.)  This is the way its been for little over a hundred years, Dundarave Beach as something of a sanctuary for families.

Before there was a West Vancouver, epochs back to the arrival of the First Peoples across the Bering Straight land bridge (summer reading: Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel), this beach remained a sanctuary but in even more powerful ways.  The forests were ancient and likely came down to the edge of the water then, and the tides sustained a greater array of life than they do even now.  We're seeing otters about today in greater profusion, and there was the grey whale last summer that paused right in the heart of the swimming buoys; but four thousand years ago, the magnitude of life on this beach would have been almost supernatural.  It surrounded and sustained the ancestors of our friends of the Squamish Nation.

All of this underscores the enormity of the gesture of Wendy Charbonneau, whose many times great grandfather Chief George Capilano welcomed Captain George Vancouver to the waters off Dundarave Beach, in lifting her hands to welcome the Dundarave Festival of Lights last season.  With the blessing of the Elders of the Squamish Nation, we named our principal performance space on the Beach the Festival Longhouse because, well, it is long but also because it is a place of sanctuary against the weather, a place to include everyone in celebrating the life of our community, a place to rejoice in the ways all of us belong here. 

In the hands of Ryan and his crew at Wildcoast Productions, the Festival Longhouse is very much a twenty-first century take on the most ancient of structures, high tension cables and structural supports for an immense white roof.  Raised and then removed for each Festival weekend, the Longhouse reflects our values of human ecology in sustainability and a no-trace presence on Dundarave Beach.  A big bonus, which we try never to take for granted, is Ryan's unflappable professionalism in taking our vision for the site and making it happen--the grace of the Dundarave Nativity Pavilion and its spire high above the Beach standing with the welcoming expanse of the Festival Longhouse against the worst of a Pacific coast winter.

It may well feel like winter now in this flinty midsummer, but the weather calls us always to give shelter to each other, to make certain in every season we can all enjoy the comfort and power of belonging.

They built our community, calling it out of the ancient forests, laying the foundations of our schools and churches, our roads, bridges and libraries.  They fought and sacrificed through two world wars, preserving the ideas of democracy and freedom against evil and suffering on a scale the world had never seen before.  They "bathed" in the waters at Dundarave Beach, basked in the sun there and climbed the mountains to ski on virgin slopes, gave birth to our generations.

Today, and you will not read their stories in the North Shore News, the Outlook or in any other paper, many of the children of this "great generation", many of our elders have to make a choice between buying groceries and paying the rent.  The economic downturn has hit some of them the hardest, forcing them out of their homes and into the Lookout Emergency Aid Society's North Shore Shelter.  They are turning quietly to the shelter from West Vancouver and North Vancouver, not calling attention to the fact that they cannot keep a roof over their heads after giving their lives to create our way of life.

According to the staff of the Shelter, all of this started to happen with alarming speed over the last year, since the close of the Festival in 2009.  Seniors, some of them with advanced degrees, started turning to the Shelter as their last recourse against the disturbing reality of the economic downturn.  We don't know their names, nor do we have a right to know their names.  They are registered in the 478 people who have logged into the Shelter, somewhere in the majority of people who stayed there for an average duration of 22.15 days between our last New Year's Day and today.

We have the power to answer their need, to give them love and support and safe harbour against a brutal economy, by lighting trees of hope on Dundarave Beach.  Over the past two Christmases, these trees have raised $50,000 for the North Shore Shelter, and we are well on our way to increasing this running total in the Christmas that's coming to us now.  Sponsor a Christmas tree for the elder in your life who's helped make you the person you are today, sponsor a tree for your family or school, for your business, church or community group, and let your tree be a brilliant part of the solution.  This Christmas, in the Dundarave Festival of Lights, we can work to the day when we end homelessness beautifully.  We can shine in the true spirit of the season, and live the best spirit of our community.