This year, the Heart of the City Festival features three days of ceremony, teachings, and stories in the Downtown Eastside’s Oppenheimer Park.

The “Honouring our Grandmothers Project” is a three-year journey of a “message chest...honoring our grandmothers...that would travel BC from the high mountains to the salmon spawning beds connected to the rivers down to Vancouver.”

Nadine Spence is the guiding light behind the project. Beginning with an opening ceremony on Friday, November 5, and ending with a sending-off ceremony on Sunday, November 7, Nadine Spence describes the ceremony as bringing “a connection to [our] grandmother’s teachings...passed down from generation to generation.”

Listen to her interview below.