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This article will be appearing in the May issue of Westcoast German News. Please subscribe (link below this post).

On Monday, April 29th, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO, Switzerland, members of the Consular Corp, the Swiss Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and Canadians interested in promoting green industry attended an event at the Oceanview Suites in the Pan Pacific Hotel in Canada Place, Vancouver, BC focussing on Cleantech.

Cleantech is a new technology and related business models that offer competitive returns for investors and customers, while providing solutions to global challenges. It represents a diverse range of products, services and processes, all intended to:
Provide superior performance at lower costs, while
greatly reducing or eliminating negative ecological impact, at the same time as
improving the productive and responsible use of natural resources

H.E. Ulrich Lehner, Ambassador of Switzerland to Canada gave the welcome and introduced M. -G. Ineichen-Fleisch, the State Secretary, who gave a keynote talk called “Switzerland: Cleantech Strategy for a Better World”. Penny Ballem, the City Manager of Vancouver, BC also gave some welcoming remarks.

Three other keynote speakers were Elmer Sum, the Managing Director of the GreenTech Exchange/Global Cleantech Cluster Association, who gave a talked called “Immersing Green Innovations and CleanTech Solutions in Traditional Industries”; then Juvarya Warsi, an Economic Strategist from the Vancouver Economic Commission gave a talk on “Vancouver’s Green Economy & Cleantech Sector”. Finally Nico Lauer, Director of CleanTech Markets from North America, Boston talked about “Switzerland’s Model Cleantech Export Promotion: Facilitating the Transition to a Sustainable Economy”.

Globe President/CEO John Wiebe discussed an “Insight Study; Clean Energy & Storage Sector” after a short break. The next Globe Biennial Conference and Fair Trade on Business and the Environment, will be March 26th to 28th, 2014 in the Vancouver Convention Centre East Building at Canada Place.
At 11:10 am, four CleanTech companies were given an opportunity to present their businesses:
-Christian Haueselmann, Head of Innovation & Export, Co-Founder Company: Swisscleantech
-Alexander Kopp, President/CEO of Nexum from the company: AVA-C02
Bettina Kahlert, CEO of the company climatop
-Hans-Juerg Etter, company representative Canada from Wyssen Avalenche Control, AG
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Closing remarks were given by Bryan Buggey, Director/Businesses Development from the Vancouver Economic Commission. This was followed by a networking lunch.

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The 16th Annual celebration offers a chance to experience diverse European culture, cuisine, entertainment and more, along with an Arts Plaza, a Talent Show & a featured country

May 15, 2013 – Once again, there is no need to spring for a flight or even a Eurorail pass to experience the authentic sights, sounds and tastes of Europe. Come explore Europe… right at your doorstep! On May 25th & 26th, Swangard Stadium, along with the city of Burnaby, will host the 16th Annual European Festival – which offers the perfect way to celebrate and enjoy Europe with no jetlag and airport security checks.

This year’s festival brings together some 30 countries in this weekend cultural festival of food, fun and performances. “We’re thrilled to expand our Festival to two days this year for the first time.” says Marika Kovalcikova, Event Planner. “We will also have an Arts Plaza with over 18 Artisans sharing traditional arts & crafts with live demos and a Talent Show on Sunday afternoon.” European products can be purchased in the European Arts Plaza, as well as in the marketplace.

From 11am to 6pm on May 25th, the European Festival will feature music and dance performances that celebrate and represent the various participating countries. DJ Chris will be hosting the Afterparty dance in the Festival’s EuroCafe in between the ABRA CADABRA, an ABBA Cover Band who will play at 7 pm and THE FAB FOREVER, a Tribute to the Beatles who will be playing at 8:30 pm. DJ Chris will be in the house until 11 pm.

“While we have our after-hours DJ and dance party, the festival itself is very family-friendly with a special area just for children,” adds Marika. “Along with two bouncy castles, the kids’ area includes an array of activities that include nine-hole mini golf, a soccer radar challenge, and crafts. Plus a “passport” that can be filled out by visiting all the cultural booths.

For the first time ever, the festival also features a country – SWITZERLAND, as 2013 marks the centennial anniversary of official relations between Switzerland and Western Canada. They will be hosting the climbing wall, plus a variety of special events and activities at their tent.

This year, a second stage will be located in the European Arts Plaza. This stage will be used for dance demos with audience participation, and the Talent Show Sunday at 3 pm.

Managed by the not-for-profit EuroFest BC Society, the first European Festival took place in 1998 at the Alliance Francaise in Vancouver to help promote and educate local residents about the diversity and richness of Europe’s cultural spectrum. Ten countries participated in the first event and presented some of the national customs, local traditions and original cuisine of Europe. In 2012, the Festival moved from the Scandinavian Community Centre to the Swangard Stadium for the first time.

This year’s European Festival takes place on Saturday & Sunday, May 25th/26th, Swangard Stadium in Burnaby. (Corner of Kingsway and Boundary Road)
Saturday – 11 am to 6 pm Cultural Display, Market Place, Food Tent and Children’s Activities.
7 pm to 11 pm – DJ and Tribute Bands alternating
Sunday – 11 am to 6 pm – All activities, plus a Talent Show at 3 pm.

Online tickets cost $8 online with the weekend pass $14 at http://www.europeanfestival.ca or $10 at the door, with a weekend pass costing $15. Children under 12 are free.

Thank you to our sponsors!

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-dancing kids group at the European Festival on May 25th, 2013
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Elke Porter
Media Manager
604 828 8788
admin@porterprconsulting.com

May 15th, 2013

Europe Day Celebrated at TRIUMF, UBC

Vancouver, BC – Rolf Bruhlhart, on the Board of the EuroFest BC Society, organized the Europe Day Symposium at the TRIUMF Centre at UBC because Switzerland is the featured country of the 16th Annual European Festival and because TRIUMF is one of 11 computing centres connected to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

The day began at 9 am at the newly constructed UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences with an introduction to Europe Day by Andrea Nuesser, from the Department of European Studies and then an explanation on the Global Accomplishment – CERN, LHC and the Higgs Boson – by Dr. Rob McPherson, an ATLAS-CANADA spokesperson from the University of Victoria. There was even a direct video connection to the ATLAS control room with Claire David, University of Victoria and Mike Betterli, from SFU and TRIUMF presenting.

After this, there was a panel discussion held with Dr. Nigel Lockyer, Director of the TRIUMF Centre, Dr. Rob McPherson, from Conrad King from the Department of European Studies, and Celso Boscariol, the President of the Italian Chamber of Commerce. The topic was “Why should Europe and Canada cooperate in science & technology.” VIP’s in the audience included the German Consul General Hermann Sitz, and the TRIUMF Director Emeritus Erich Vogt.

At 12:30 a shuttle bus arrived that were taking participants to the TRIUMF Centre and the European lunch of German sausages, sauerkraut, fried onions. & a bun. Everyone was then given a guided tour of TRIUMF that lasted around 45 minutes, as well as given the opportunity to admire the Elysee Treaty Exhibition displayed in the TRIUMF Auditorium. Sponsors of this event were Pacific Arbour Retirement Communities and Black Forest Meats & Sausages Ltd.

About EuroFestBC Society

The EuroFestBC Society is a not-for-profit organization that manages the European
Festival, Europe Day and supporting events, to preserve and celebrate the local European culture and European Heritage Month, with residents and tourists in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. This year the festival will be held for two days for the first time, on May 25-26, 2013. Contact www.europeanfestival.ca

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Picture credits go to Elke Porter or Dietrich Klaue

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EuroFest BC Society

The EuroFest BC Society is a non-profit organization that manages the Annual European Festival, as well as Europe Day May 9th and supporting events for residents and tourists in Metro Vancouver, BC to preserve and celebrate the local European culture during the European Heritage month of May. A board member, Rolf Brulhart took responsibility for Europe Day, and organized a truly enjoyable event with active and hard-working volunteers.

The EuroFest BC Society and its society members have been celebrating Europe Day on May 9th, since 2006 as a social, cultural event with traditional clothes, music and food. The EuroFest BC Society is open to all 47 European countries and not only those belonging to the EU. The annual European Festival has been celebrated since 1989 awith a constantly increasing number of visitors. For the first time in 16 years, the European Festival 2013 will be a 2-day event.

Some of the goals of the festival are to promote respect for cultural diversity, to increase International support and involvement in BC, to preserve and showcase the unique European costumes, traditions, cuisine and heritage and thereby increasing the awareness of and exposure to European culture in BC. Visit http://www.europeanfestival.ca

Europe Day – May 9th, 2013

Europe Day began at 7:45 am at the Triumf Building with a breakfast for VIP’s and Media.  Here I am with Dr. Nigel S. Lockyer, Director of TRIUMF, just before breakfast.
At 9:30 am, we heard from Dr. Nigel S. Lockyer who introduced Europe Day at Triumf Centre, from Codrutsa Rotaru (shown right), Eurofest BC Society President and from Carlos Amaro, Vice Dean Consular Corps of British Columbia.
Around the room were exhibition panels describing the Elysee Treaty between France & Germany, who recently celebrated its 50th Anniversary, at a separate event at UBC.
Here is the line-up in the beautiful new pharmaceutical building, where the event took place in a lecture hall, complete with microphones and screens that showed part of the audience!
The Higgs boson plays a unique role in the Standard Model, by explaining why the other elementary particles, except the photon and gluon, are massive. In particular, the Higgs boson would explain why the photon has no mass, while the W and Z bosons are very heavy. In electroweak theory, the Higgs boson generates the masses of the leptons (electron, muon, and tau) and quarks. As the Higgs boson is massive, it must interact with itself. Because the Higgs boson is a very massive particle and also decays almost immediately when created, only a very high energy particle accelerator can observe and record it. Experiments to confirm and determine the nature of the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN began in early 2010, and were performed at Fermilab’s Tevatron until its closure in late 2011. Mathematical consistency of the Standard Model requires that any mechanism capable of generating the masses of elementary particles become visible at energies above 1.4 TeV; therefore, the LHC (designed to collide two 7 to 8 TeV proton beams) was built to answer the question of whether the Higgs boson actually exists. On 4 July 2012, the two main experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently that they found a new particle with a mass of about 125 GeV/c2 (about 133 proton masses, on the order of 10−25 kg), which is “consistent with the Higgs boson.” On March 14th, 2013 the Higgs Boson was tentatively confirmed to exist.
We had a satellite link directly to ATLAS in CERN, Switzerland! ATLAS is one of the two general-purpose detectors at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, and involves several thousand researchers including over a hundred scientists at Canadian universities and at TRIUMF.
Dr. Nigel Lockyer, TRIUMF Director, Dr. Rob McPherson, ATLAS spokesperson, University of Victoria, Conrad King, Institute of European Studies at UBC and finally Celso Boscariol, President of the Italian Chamber of Commerce hold a panel discussion!
Tours can also be booked on Wednesdays and Fridays at 1 pm. Our tour was only about 45 minutes long, while a technical tour can be longer. Here is a link to tour TRIUMF http://www.triumf.ca/home/for-public/tours-triumf
The tour of TRIUMF started with a visit to the Control Room
Miniature Cyclotron
In the Meson Hall at TRIUMF beams of energetic particles travel through evacuated pipes hidden under the yellow concrete blocks, and are steered by big magnets. It is a great honour to know exactly how and where to move the giant blocks.
There is a lot of machinery and equipment to do the job of playing with protons or isolating isotopes. Canada can be the leader in the world on medical isotopes.
This is me overlooking the gigantic Meson Hall experimental area – amazing experience!
Codrutsa Rotaru, President of the EuroFest BC Society (right) with event Planner Marika Kovalicikova

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Remember to attend the 16th Annual European Festival on Saturday, May 25th or Sunday, May 26th.
Details and information can be seen at:

http://www.europeanfestival.ca

All pictures on this page by Dietrich Klaue – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Otherwise, contact Elke, for more information on:
-dancing kids group at the European Festival on May 25th, 2013
-public relations for your small business
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A Gathering to Discuss Scientific Cooperation between Europe and Canada

(Vancouver, BC) — Europe Day, a day of celebration observed by most European countries, exists to commemorate the establishment of the peace and unity among European countries. On Thursday, May 9, 2013, EuroFestBC and TRIUMF will locally host a symposium and luncheon in observance of Europe Day, to discuss and enrich understanding of scientific collaborations between Canada and Europe, using the Higgs discovery at CERN as a chief illustration.

Canada has a long-standing relationship with Europe for scientific
collaboration. After the formation of the European Union, the EU-Canada
Partnership Agenda was developed a decade ago to overcome global and local
challenges and strengthen agreements with regards to the economy,
environment, scientific research, etc. The Europe Day symposium will further
discuss the history of Europe Day, scientific cooperation, and include a
live virtual visit to the ATLAS control room at CERN.

The symposium will be held at UBC Pharmaceutical Sciences building from 9:00
am until noon. A shuttle bus will be available to bring registered
participants to TRIUMF for the afternoon, where delegates will have the
opportunity to take a guided tour of TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory
for nuclear and particle physics. Working with the Hot Spot Café and Black
Forest Meats and Sausages Ltd, TRIUMF will be grilling up a special,
low-cost European lunch of German sausages, sauerkraut and bun.

Courtesy of the German Consulate General in Vancouver, an exhibition
showcasing the Élysée Treaty, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this
year, will be on display at TRIUMF. The exhibition consists of 26 posters;
each in English, German and French language.

To continue the Europe Day conversation, a cocktail reception and
presentation of its EU-Canada Business Guide will be hosted by the Italian
Chamber of Commerce in Canada – West, from 5PM until 7:30PM. To RSVP for
this separate event, please contact Alessandro at 604.682.1410 or
alessandro@iccbc.com.

Prior to the symposium, TRIUMF is hosting a networking breakfast event for
VIP guests and media. Any journalists wishing to attend are encouraged to
contact Melissa Baluk, TRIUMF’s Communications Assistant at mbaluk@triumf.ca
(or +1-604-222-7692).

To register and for more information, go to
http://eurofestbcsociety.com/europe-day/

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If you would like to subscriber to Westcoast German News Magazine, please click here!
http://eepurl.com/xUlwr
Otherwise, contact Elke, for more information on:
-dancing kids group at the European Festival on May 25th, 2013
-public relations for your small business
-contributing, advertising or sponsoring a monthly magazine?

Bitte macht mit! Weiterleiten, weiterclicken, weiter lesen…

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