On Halloween night pirates will be taking over a seemingly non-descript bungalow in south Burnaby. Everyone is welcome to come and enjoy this pirate-themed yard display created to celebrate “honourable pirates” and raise funds to help build a roof for the St. Stephen’s Children’s Centre in Uganda. The Pirate House will be open to the public on Thursday, October 31, 2013 from 5pm to 8pm at 5970 Portland Street, Burnaby. BC.
At first glance, the display at The Pirate House – complete with ship, inn, graveyard of dishonourable pirates, shrines to honourable pirates, and treasure hunt – is a fun, immersive, kid-friendly house to go trick or treating at. But at the heart of it is so much more. This year-long collaborative multimedia art project was created and coordinated by “Captain” Julie Desroches with handmade contributions from family and friends from across the world including Burnaby, Vancouver, Richmond, Victoria, Oliver, Burns Lake, Fort St. John, Montreal, as well as Switzerland and Uganda.
The goals of The Pirate House are to:
- Create a pirate-themed yard display for Halloween.
- Make it a collaborative project among family and friends.
- Hand-make as many items as possible, using mostly recycled materials.
- Symbolize and celebrate the “honorable pirates” among us.
- Raise money for St. Stephen’s Children Centre in Uganda, Africa (where Julie volunteered in the fall of 2000).
- Celebrate the triumph over a severe illness that nearly ended Julie’s life 5 Halloweens ago.
A note from Julie; “8 years ago I completed a doctoral dissertation on resilience, but this experience [the illness] and the people who helped me through it taught me more than graduate school ever could. Anyone who knows me and all the art projects I have done over the years knows that this is a very ‘Julie’ way of celebrating being alive and expressing some of my journey and what I have learned from it. Above all, it is a thank-you to the people who stood by me and helped keep my ship afloat. They truly are my very honorable pirate crew.”
Read more about The Pirate House, Julie, and St. Stephen’s Children Centre at www.piratehouse.ca.