In this episode, Vancouver Special takes look back at 2009. Co-founder of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education Victor Chan shares his experience organizing the Vancouver Peace Summit and HUB's Colin Stein talks about the opening of Vancouver's Burrard Bridge bike lane. CBC's Ian Hanomansing sets the scene for the year and VPL librarian Tim McMillan is back with some great reads you can find at your library. Victor Chan has known the Dalai Lama for more than forty years and was instrumental in organizing the Vancouver Peace Summit, a three-day conference that provided an intimate forum for the Dalai Lama and other brilliant minds to consider issues of universal responsibility, education and compassion as a foundation for peace. Joining the Dalai Lama at the summit were Nobel Laureates Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Murray Gell-Mann, and numerous highly-respected international leaders from the realms of education, the arts, business, politics and social transformation. More people in Vancouver are choosing cycling as a sustainable and healthy way to get around our city. In the summer of 2009, the City of Vancouver launched a pilot project to make commuting between Kitsilano and the downtown core safer and more bike-friendly by opening a bike only lane on the Burrard Bridge. A year later, the pilot was deemed a big success and, since then millions of cyclists use the lane to cross the bridge each year. The theme song is “North Wind” by Vancouver band Lakefield, from the album Sounds from the Treeline.
