Jennifer Dalton is the survivor development chair for Relay for Life Victoria. Last year's Victoria Relay raised more than $90 000 ($55 million was raised by relays across Canada). Dalton says that survivors are integral to Relay for Life, which is the Canadian Cancer Society’s largest fundraiser.

TUESDAY, MAY 15

JOINT JOURNAL LAUNCH PARTY

The Malahat Review and This Side of West are hosting a joint launch party with readings of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction by authors published in each of the literary journals. Featured readers include Patrick Friesen, Madeline Sonik and Karen Enns. The Well (821 Fort St.). 7 p.m. Free.

If a picture says a thousand words, people said a lot about climate change on May 5. Through the environmental activist website 350.org, concerned citizens from around the world took part in a day of climate action called Connect the Dots. Participants from hundreds of cities on nearly every continent posed for photographs in which they highlighted ways that climate change has affected their communities — and the ways it will affect them in the future.

Ask a student to describe UVic’s Diana M. Priestly Law Library, and they will often use words like “beautiful,” “new” and “quiet.” Thanks to some complaints about disruptive students in the law library, however, another word has been bandied about: SNAILS. The acronym stands for “Students Not Actually In Law School.”

If royalty-obsessed shows like Game of Thrones and The Tudors have taught us one thing (besides how far Jonathan Rhys Meyers can curl his upper lip), it's that an old monarchy's power can live on today — not because of its political prowess, but because of its ability to entertain.

Laura Bifano’s illustrations have a way of pulling you into the page, making you wish you had a sunhat and a rowboat so you could spend the day there. Under her brush, hot air balloons take to the skies in droves, melancholic men grow from lily pads and horses leap over whole cities.

If you scan poet Shane Koyczan's biographical details in a pamphlet or on a webpage, you'll quickly become acquainted with his wins. Champion of the U.S. National Poetry Slam. Winner of the Canadian Spoken Word Olympics. Performer at the opening ceremony for those other Olympics — the ones held in Vancouver in the winter of 2010.

For its 15th season, Dance Victoria has gone back to basics: ballet. But basic doesn’t mean blasé.

When I lived in Spain, I wandered past the University of Seville on most of my days off, admiring its stern, stone facade on my way to post correos home or drink café con leche un- der orange trees. One day, a friend told me, “That’s where that opera, Carmen, is set. The university used to be a tobacco factory.”

If you saw a horseman decked out in his finest apocalyptic duds in your hometown, what would you do? Give the Book of Revelations a close reading, perhaps. If you've paid any attention to the proposed pipeline projects that have divided this country for months (Keystone, Northern Gateway) and you're wondering what lies ahead, what should you do? Watch The Pipe at the Victoria Film Festival (VFF).

Updated November 24, 2011

We’ve reached the point in the Penn State sex scandal at which well-paid lawyers start closing ranks around their well-heeled clients. Everyone gets very careful about what they say — and what they’re called.

Mary's Wedding is about firsts — for me, for the world, and for Pacific Opera Victoria (POV).

When I first enter the 10 000-square foot opera shop on Discovery Street where Pacific Opera Victoria (POV) builds its productions, I am struck by the emptiness of the front room. POV is the only opera company in Canada that builds sets from scratch for every opera it produces. I’d expected every square inch of the shop to be bristling with Valkyrie costumes and Viking helmets from past shows. Instead, a few employees eat lunch at a sparse table. A single piece of paper is pinned to a large bulletin board. On the paper is a picture of a tree that’s fallen and crushed a house. Under the picture are the words, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m — oh, shit.”

To properly review any sort of revue, I feel I must open with “Laydeeeeees and gentlemen! I give you ... 500 words on burlesque and body humour!” When the show in question contains a cast of carnies, this hawking sort of intro is almost a given. But it's impossible for me to phonetically emulate the phlegmy, Chewbacca-esque vowels of Ian Ferguson, the creator, announcer and director of the live, improvised soap opera Sin City: Carnies. The show runs nearly every Tuesday from Oct. 25 to April 17 at the Victoria Event Centre and marks the second season of Ferguson's serial soap concept. So perhaps I'll leave the proud announcements to the practiced pros.

There’s a good reason that the story of creation comes at the beginning of the Bible — all that “Let there be light” and “Let there be ponies and peonies” business sets the stage for the drama that follows. Simply put, without the backdrop, there would be no Bible.

Richard Wagner wrote The Flying Dutchman, an opera based on a nautical legend about a ghost ship, after a harrowing sea voyage of his own. Perhaps this is why the three-act opera charts a steady course in spite of its length. Pacific Opera Victoria's version, staged at the Royal Theatre until Oct. 16, runs three hours; this includes two intermissions. Even so, you'll find yourself stunned at how the time flies (and yes, you'll have to pardon the airborne imagery that takes to the wing in this review).

On Sept. 24 and 25, a bevy of brass hardware-wearing Steam Punk aficionados descended on Craigdarroch Castle for the Victoria Steam Expo.

Sarah Rempel, founder of Victoria’s Vintage Fair, holds up a knitted sweater covered in scalloped red, white and blue stripes and turns to a gilded mirror to examine it against her torso. Her vintage yellow flower necklace pops against the primary colours.

At the UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) board meeting on Sept. 26, members voted unanimously to endorse the Purple Letter Campaign via an omnibus bill. UVic Pride had previously endorsed the campaign at their Sept. 22 collective meeting. The Purple Letter Campaign calls on youth and their allies to write letters to the B.C. government, preferably on purple stationery. The letters’ contents are meant to convince Premier Christy Clark that a unified sexual orientation and gender identity policy must be implemented in every school in the province. The goal is to put an end to homophobic bullying through education.

Premier Christy Clark has tried to stave off an influx of public concern surrounding hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) by announcing that she will create an online registry for fracking companies. The registry will show where companies are engaged in fracking, and which chemicals they are using in the process. It will be in place by January 2012.