Looking back at stories I wrote over the past 12 months, 2023 was a pretty entertaining year in Surrey full of concerts, plays, comedy shows, art exhibits, filmmaking and more:
• Bravo to the Queen Elizabeth Secondary teachers who buzzed into Toronto to win $10,000 for their Surrey school during a round of “Family Feud Canada” on CBC. Good sports, the five P.E. teachers (Tavis Bowie, Shawn Klein, Sukh Badwal, Frederique Muirhead and Danielle Calbick) spent part of their summer vacation on the Gerry Dee-host game show during a special Teachers’ Week promo. The Surrey quintet rallied late in the game to beat another team from a school in Westlock, Alberta.
• The Taphouse Guildford was set to close on Jan. 1, which would have ended several decades of entertainment in that building, 15330 102A Ave. The 500-seat bar/restaurant was once known as The Mirage dance club, which opened in 1997 and reno’d/rebranded as Taphouse in 2014. In October, Surrey city council OK’d a 22-storey tower development on the corner property, also home to a casino many years ago. Last week came news that managers of the pub said they will buy the business from longtime owner/operator Wayne Ferguson and will continue operating the pub for another couple years.
• Last January it was fun to see the Surrey homecoming of Erica Sigurdson during the Snowed In comedy tour show at Surrey Arts Centre’s Main Stage, a venue located a few blocks south of her former school, QE Secondary. “It’s weird,” Sigurdson said prior to the show, “because I’ve played almost all of the theatres we’re doing on this tour, except in my hometown. I’ve never played Surrey Arts Centre, so it’s kind nice to be able to do that. Hopefully my friends show up.” In less than a month, the tour returns to the Bear Creek Park theatre, on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024.
• Heart singer Ann Wilson told some Surrey-ish stories during her concert at Coquitlam’s Hard Rock Casino theatre in October. Five songs in, after “Magic Man,” the 73-year-old Wilson said that at The Birdcage in White Rock, “we were the house band on and off, but we lived in West Van. Every night we had these two long trips, you know, to and from the club. So in the back of a van rolling down King George Highway, my sister Nancy and Roger Fisher came up with the riff for that last song, and also for ‘Love Alive,’ just on those rides back and forth. I’ll never forget it. It was quite cool – just young, poverty-stricken musicians trying to put ends together.”
• Released this year, the chilling documentary film “Manufacturing the Threat” sheds light on John “Omar” Nuttall and Amanda “Ana” Korody, the Surrey couple involved in a plot to blow up the B.C. Legislature in Victoria 10 years ago, on Canada Day 2013. The two were originally found guilty by a jury and did time in prison, but were later acquitted when the Supreme Court of B.C. heard they were coerced by undercover police officers to carry out a terrorist bombing. Worth watching, Amy Miller’s movie is a fascinating portrait of the couple and also a murky world of Canadian police infiltration, manipulation and entrapment.
• In October we laughed a lot during the Lauren Taylor-directed comedy “The Birds and the Bees,” Mark Crawford’s sex farce, toured by Arts Club Theatre Company. The farmhouse-set comedy buzzed with beekeeper Gail (played by Nancy Kerr), her turkey-farmer daughter Sarah (Agnes Tong), flirty neighbour Earl (Gerry Mackay) and a nerdy grad student named Ben (Riley Hardwick). The show was more of a romp-com than rom-com, with some naughty moments for adult eyes only.
• In Surrey’s Bridgeview area, operators of Central City Fun Park plan to more than double the size of the facility with the addition of an outdoor go-kart track, larger roller rink, 28-foot carousel and more midway games. The $8-million expansion plans were approved by Surrey city council in May, and the Whalley-raised Vilio brothers hope for a reveal next June, in time for summer fun.
• On a warm day in August, Surrey Civic Plaza is where plans were announced for Surrey Festival of the Arts, a two-day showcase of music, theatre, dance, visual arts and more. I’ll be interested to see exactly what materializes at Cloverdale’s Bill Reid Millennium Amphitheatre next August, when the festival is set to debut.
• In Ladner, it was a special moment at Barnside Brewing’s Harvest Festival when 54-40 guitarist Dave Genn invited son Beckett to air-guitar during “Ocean Pearl,” near the end of a fantastic 17-song set. Beckett was all smiles as his dad riffed away beside him. Earlier, for the Ministry-ish “Radio Luv Song,” Genn’s guitar was so gloriously loud that he obviously wanted to be heard across the bay in Crescent Beach, where he grew up.
• Planners of the new Russell & Roots series picked Softball City for two summer concerts, starting with rock music and closing with country a couple of weeks later. A highlight of the first, on July 29, was Big Wreck’s performance in the blazing sunshine, but Marianas Trench made me yawn at sundown. Hopefully things come together in 2024 for the series, staged by Newton-based Russell Brewing Company with the production help of Billie Aasen’s The Festival Company.
• For the rest of his life, North Delta-raised metal bassist Darin Wall has a crazy story to tell about the time he was shot at a Greyhawk gig in Idaho (and probably stopped a mass shooting), and later got to use Dave Grohl’s legendary “throne of rock” on stage while nursing his leg injury, in 2021. Now living in Seattle, Wall says the bullet is still lodged in his thigh, but he’s relatively OK other than some phantom pains.
• Last summer I was happy to see Whalley-based artist Diane Roy finally have her art shown at Surrey Art Gallery, in a big way, after more than three decades of making art locally. Most impressive was “The Magnificent,” a colourful wall tapestry of a blue whale’s head that dominated the gallery space. For the Quebec-raised artist it was a COVID-era project started in 2020 at a friend’s warehouse.
• Surrey-raised country singer Lisa Brokop, now based in Nashville, Tennessee, released new music including a remake of George Jones’ 1985 ballad, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?” While Jones’ version of the Troy Seals-written hit reminisced about the male legends of country music, Brokop gave the song a female-focused twist with nods to Patsy, Dolly, Tammy, EmmyLou and other queens of the genre. Interestingly, Brokop recorded the song as a duet with Georgette Jones, daughter of George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
• In mid-July, actors from across B.C. “broke a leg” in Surrey during a provincial play showcase. Theatre BC’s Mainstage 2023 competition welcomed five theatre companies to Surrey Arts Centre for nightly stagings, including Newton’s Pivot Theatre with its award-winning “Perfect Arrangement,” a play about gay couples posing straight at a dinner party during the ‘Lavender Scare’ of the 1950s. Next up for the company, starting Feb. 15 at Bethany-Newton United Church, is a production of Kim Carney’s play, “Moonglow,” about a feisty, bitter Alzheimer’s patient who doesn’t want to move into a nursing facility until she meets Joe, a widower who shares her love for dance.
• In May, people danced to live music again at Whalley Legion, in a spacious new lounge at the landmark Veterans Village building, on City Parkway. Legion branch 229’s social club doesn’t have a stage or fancy lights, yet it’s busy with country and classic-rock bands on weekend nights.
• When The Cure played Rogers Arena in June, I time-travelled back to the ’80s days of the Bumpers teen dance club in Whalley. Maybe you remember the place, just like heaven for Robert Smith lookalikes who adored that Goth sound. Today, The Cure has carved a legacy with chiming guitars, airy synths and well-chorused bass lines, and their concert reminded me of just how many great songs they’ve recorded over the past 40-plus years.
• Searching Spotify one night, I discovered a live recording of City and Colour at Surrey’s Bell Performing Arts Centre. Back in April 2017 Dallas Green did an acoustic set at the theatre, and one of those songs, “Friends,” ended up on the following year’s live album, Guide Me Back Home. Before he starts singing in that great, high voice of his, Green opens with an amusing story about his day at the Bell, located at Sullivan Heights Secondary, where he wanted to check out the theatre’s balcony, walked through the wrong door and ended up trapped in the school hallway. “I realized I was no longer the guy playing here, I was the old bearded man with tattoos on his neck out in the high school,” he says as the crowd laughs. “I can see how that might have been frightening to certain people, you know?” Someone eventually let him back inside the theatre, but Green never did get to see the stage from those balcony seats.
