Community
Island festivals include the annual Gabriola Theatre Festival in August and the Thanksgiving Weekend Studio and Gallery Tour, both events sponsored by the Gabriola Arts Council. The Shipyard School "Launch Festival" is held mid April in Silva Bay to celebrate the graduation of the students - this is a well attended two day event high on the list for anyone interested in traditional wooden boats and their construction. The Dancing Man Music Festival is held in late April through early May and the Home and Garden Tour in June. The Gabriola Haiku Weekend, celebrating haiku poetry, has been held each July since 2002. The Non-Marine Boat Race, the Sand Sculpture Competition, the Annual Salmon Barbecue, and Gabriola Islander Day all occur in August. Throughout the summer, the Saturday Market at the Agricultural Hall features local produce and baked goods from the island, as well as crafts and artwork. Habonim Dror Camp Miriam, a Jewish summer camp, operates on the island from the end of June through the end of August.
Folklife Village, on North Road a few minutes beyond the ferry terminal, is the island's main shopping centre. It was bought and transferred to Gabriola after its role as the Folklife Pavilion, a tribute to Canada's native and settler cultures, in Expo 86 in Vancouver. Other shopping areas can be found at Twin Beaches Mall on the north end of the island and Silva Bay on the south end. The island has a strong connection to the city of Nanaimo. Gabriola residents often refer to Gabriola as The Rock and to Vancouver Island as The Big Island.
Gabriola and surrounding islands have more than 70 known petroglyphs - sandstone carvings, some of which may be as old as 2,000 years or more. A small park at the Gabriola Museum contains reproductions of some of these petroglyphs.
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Famous quotes containing the word community:
“I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Every community is an association of some kind and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Jesus would recommend you to pass the first day of the week rather otherwise than you pass it now, and to seek some other mode of bettering the morals of the community than by constraining each other to look grave on a Sunday, and to consider yourselves more virtuous in proportion to the idleness in which you pass one day in seven.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)