From our calendar to yours comes this carefully considered agenda of cool things we are doing, wishing we could do, or conspiring to do in Vancouver from February 20 to February 26, 2019. Please note that you can now get the Scout List – with a few extra pieces of intel included – sent to your inbox every Thursday. Sign up for your subscription in the sidebar

EASTSIDE FLEA | It may not feel like it, but hold on! Signs of spring will start to pop up soon. Update your warmer weather wardrobe with a few accessories or key pieces of clothing at the Eastside Flea Spring Kick-Off Market this weekend. Yes, The Flea is back! Peruse booth after curated booth of new and vintage goodies from over 50 local vendors. Bonus: music, food trucks and cheeky cocktails and a solid community of good people to hang out with. See you there! Find out more.

HONOUR | Catch Seven Samurai (Japan, 1954) at The Cinematheque Thursday and Friday nights this week. The film is set in 16th-century Japan, where seven unemployed swordsmen are hired to defend a village against marauding bandits. As “Akira Kurosawa’s stirring epic topped a recent BBC poll in which critics from 43 countries selected the greatest foreign-language films of all time.” A collective thumbs up from critics of 43 countries says something, right? Find out more.

OPENING | French Moderns: Monet to Matisse opens at the Vancouver Art Gallery this week. This sixty piece exhibition (on loan to the VAG from the Brooklyn Museum) is comprised of paintings and sculptures by an impressive roster of a-list players like Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Monet, Renoir and Rodin. From the Vancouver Art Gallery: “The works in French Moderns exemplify the avant-garde movements that defined Modern art from the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries, tracing a formal and conceptual shift from depicting the pictorial to evoking the idea, from a focus on naturalism to the ascendance of abstraction.” It’s not every day that a Cézanne drops in to town, so scoot down to the VAG see what all the fuss is about. The show runs February 21 – May 20, 2019. Find out more.

CREATE | On the last Saturday of each month (that’s this Saturday!) the Contemporary Art Gallery invites art enthusiasts of all ages to drop-in for Family Day. The fun-filled day includes exhibition tours and art-making activities inspired by themes found in the current show (right now, that’s Anne Low, Chair For A Woman) and the activity will be all about block printing and patterns. From The CAG: “Inspired by Anne Low’s explorations of surface, pattern and material, create your own repeat pattern using block printing methods and found materials.” Roll up your sleeves and get a little messy making some art! Find out more.

INVEST | Beaches and shorelines are one of the reasons Vancouver is such a great place to live, and we need to protect them. If you’re up for learning a little about how you can contribute, put on your boots and hit Stanley Park for a Saturday afternoon walk with Angela Danyluk, the Senior Sustainability Specialist with the City of Vancouver. She will lead an educational seawall walk to talk about rising seas, weather patterns associated climate change, and the impact of both on Vancouver shorelines. Danyluk will also discuss how Vancouverites can help contribute to the health and survival of the Park’s shores over the next 80 years. Get involved! Find out more.

ART | Another dump of snow is in the forecast. If you’re still trying to figure out how to cope with the wintry weather, might we suggest escaping into another world via a beautiful, colourful and summery new art book? Local artist Ryan Romero’s  “Life Jacket & Other Paintings” is a collection of artworks and writings created by Romero during his time at Elmo’s House Artist residency in the Philippines last year. The book launches this Saturday with a supporting exhibition of selected works at The Bakery in East Van. Get a sneak preview of the artist’s paintings by following @ryanromerostudio on Instagram (here).

MUSIC | Wow…it’s a good weekend for gigs in Vancouver. Sharon Van Etten is playing the Imperial on Friday (tickets are long gone, but Craigslist is always a possibility). Teenage Fanclub is in from Scotland to play at The Commodore on Thursday (details here), and Snoop-Dog takes over Rogers Arena on Friday (score here). Oh, and Beirut plays The Orpheum on Tuesday (still a few tickets left). That’s a lot of talent in town!

ESCAPE | Are you wishing you were overseas on a glorious Spanish vacation sipping wine and feasting on tapas instead of facing the reality that Mother Nature might force you to cave-in and finally purchase a snow shovel? We get it. If Barcelona isn’t in the cards this week, do the next best thing by scoring a seat at a multi-course, Spanish-style long table dinner. The Spanish One will feature Spanish wines curated by Vin Van’s Jo Owen, paired with dishes created by Vancouver chefs Michael Varga and Eugene Cheng. Other than real Spanish sunshine, tickets include everything else you’ll need to pretend you’ve run away: a welcome drink, delicious food and wine pairings. Get sorted quickly, because ticket sales end Thursday for Friday’s event. Snag yours here.

HOPWIRED | Like coffee? Enjoy beer? Fantastic news! This weekend brings an exciting opportunity to see the two worlds come together at Hopwired Festival. Grab a few pals and head to the Croatian Cultural Centre to tour table after booth of small scale breweries and independent coffee roasters; taste their wares, talk to them about what they are doing and — the super cool part — taste their collaborative small batch, coffee-inspired beers. To wit, Fuggles & Warlock teams up with Notch Coffee; Field House Brewing pairs with Smoking Gun; Sundown Beer and Mountain’s Edge get together; Backcountry Brewing and Counterpart Coffee do the same — and these are just a handful of participants! Creativity, community and tasty beverages? Sounds like some good times to me. Tickets are expected to sell out, so don’t sit on it too long. Get yours here.

 GROW | It’s time to start thinking about what you want to line-up for spring planting. Luckily this Saturday is a Seedy one! Make a trip to VanDusen Botanical Gardens to score organic and heritage varieties and plants at the annual Seedy Saturday sale. In addition to open pollinated and organic/ecologically grown seeds, you’ll also find display and information tables, master gardeners and expert growers. Basically, this is a full-on spring planting excite-a-thon. Admission is by donation, supporting programs from Seeds of Diversity and the Master Gardeners Association of BC. Find out more.