As the Explore program at UBC comes to a close, Jacques Cartier and his team would like to thank you for your overwhelming participation and enthusiasm throughout your five week stay. We hope that the relationships you have made here will live on well into the future, and that the Explore spirit will guide you ever-onward in your discoveries of language, culture and friendship. Merci et à bientôt!
Avec la fin du programme Explore 2010 à UBC, Jacques Cartier et son équipe voudraient vous remercier de votre enthousiasme et de votre participation passionnée lors de votre séjour à Vancouver. On espère que vous resterez en contact les uns avec les autres et que vous vous rappelerez toujours l’esprit d’Explore, esprit de découverte et d’amitié. Bonne continuation, Explorateurs ! Thank you and see you soon !
Michael, 22 years old, from Quebec City Michael has no usual group but he has many good friends. He thinks that he has improved his English. The funniest thing that happened to him in Vancouver was when he did his oral presentation. His favourite food in Vancouver was sushi.
Patience, 20 years old, from Africa (Congo) Her group of friends is Rachel and Stephanie. She thinks that she has improved her English. Now, she thinks that her understanding is pretty good and that she can speak more than before. The funniest thing that happened to her is when she went to Whitespot and she ordered a sandwich with mushrooms. She doesn’t like mushrooms but didn’t know the meaning of the word! Her favourite food in Vancouver is Japadog.
Titana, 28 years old, from Montreal She was kidding and said that she has no friends. Now, she pronounces her English words more correctly and perfectly uses the conjunctive verbs. The funniest thing that happened to in Vancouver is when she lost her shoes on the Locarno beach. Her favourite food in Vancouver is seafood.
Phonary, 20 years old, from Montreal I have my group of Asian people. I think that I improved as much as I can in English. The funniest thing that happened to me in Vancouver is when I had a really a bad dream and I went into my boyfriend's room crying in the middle of the night. My favourite food here is Japanese food.
Catherine, 25 years old, from Montreal Her group of friends is Xaviera, Cynthia, Joannie. She doesn’t know if she has improved her English skills or not. Her favourite food here is seafood.
Charles, 19 years old, from Jonquière He thinks that he has improved his English a lot. He thinks that who is in his posse is none of our business. The funniest thing that happened to him in Vancouver was when he took the wrong boat for Victoria. His favourite food here is sushi.
Tian, 20 years old, from Montreal He has a lot of friend. He thinks that he has improved his English so much. The funniest thing that happened to him here is the fact that he made friends. His favourite food here is MacDonald's.
Gabriel, 19 years old, from Jonquière He has only Charles as a friend. His English is way better. The funniest thing that happened to him is the fact that he met Marcel (a funny guy). His favourite food here is fish.
My group of friends is Sarah-Emilie, Tania, Rachel, Louis-Philippe, Virginie, Stephany, Steve, and others… I like eating at the UBC White Spot. The funniest thing that happened to me was when a girl came into my room and sat on my bed by mistake at 430 AM! It was very awkward. I improved my English by gaining more vocabulary.
Emily, 20 years old, Chambly (South Shore of Montreal)
My group of friends includes Veronique, Jean, Christina, Valerie, Keltie, Hudison, Stephanie, Tania, Charlene, Joanie, etc. My favourite restaurants are the UBC White Spot and Mahony’s on campus. The conversations I have with my friends are very comedic –they make us laugh so hard we sometimes cry. Thanks to the Explore Program I have more vocabulary and I feel more confident when I speak.
Tania, 20 years old, (North Shore of Montreal)
My friends are Stephany, Steve, Eric, Stephane, Emily, Veronique and many more!!! My favourite food is the AAA Rib burger at the Point Grill restaurant. The funniest thing that happened to me was when I was stuck on a boat in Penticton. Thanks to the Explore program, I am more confident when I talk in English and less shy. I can talk more.
Benoit, 28 years old, Notre-Dame-du-Nord, Temiscamingue
My friends are Pipe, Marie-Michelle, Latifa, Anne-Marie, Mathieu and Victor. I like to eat Asian food. I think it is funny meeting people who live in Vancouver. I have improved my English a little bit.
Louis-Philippe, Saguenay
My group of friends is Steve, Eric, Tania, Stephanie, Sarah-Emilie and Christophe. My favourite food here is eating pizza and sushi. The funniest thing is that I had to act Edward from Twilight in a skit in front of many people. I have improved my English a lot... I think.
Jessyka, 19 years old, Montreal
My group of friends is Julie, Jessica, Fillipe, Malissa, Molly, Adam and Hossein. I like to eat Mcdonald. And the funniest thing that happened to me was at Whistler. My English did not improve enough.
Sarah-Emilie, 23 years old, Quebec City
My friends are Shannel, Maimuna, Rachel, Chloe, Stephanie, Christophe, Jimmy… My favourite food here is the most not expensive one. I do not remember anything funny that happened to me. I think my English is a little better since I came here.
Lotfi, 20 years old, Montreal
favourite Vancouver food is pizza. My English has definitely improved because I am now able to have a conversation.
Amjed, 27 years old, Libya
My friends are Yassin, Anis and Lotfi. The funniest thing that happened to me is that I met some very weird people in the program. My favourite food here is spaghetti. I don't know how much my English has improved -I can't judge myself!
Marie-Eve, 23 years old, Laval
My friends are Audrey and Claudia. My favourite food here is Thai food. I think the funniest thing is when Christophe died at sock war. My English has improved a little bit.
Gloria, 19 years old, Montreal
My friends are Tian, Steffie, David, Phonary... My favourite food here is the sushi made by Japanese people. I cannot remember anything funny. My English speaking has improved really much since I came here. I have learnt new words and expressions and I am less shy when I speak.
Claudia, 19, Quebec City
My friends are Audrey and Marie-Eve. My favourite food here is sushi. I think the funniest thing that happened to me is the way Christophe died at the sock war. My English has improved a little bit.
Stéphanie comes from Ste-Anne in Beauce, Québec. She’s a law student at Laval University. She likes to bike in the summer. She loves coffee and chocolate but hates sushi and seafood. She has three cats at home and used to want to become a vet but changed her mind.
Chloé was born in Valleyfield but has been living in Montréal for two years now. She is a very artistic person and has been practicing theater, her passion, for 11 years. She also makes jewelry. She loves traveling - she’s been to Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Lithuania and India - and wants to work with autistic children in elementary school.
Nabil has lived in five countries, has three degrees in three distinct fields and speaks two and a half languages. His favourite city is Paris and his favourite colours are green and blue. He is a smoker who works in the petroleum field.
Rafael lives and studies in Montréal. This was his first time in Vancouver and he really enjoyed it. He is very happy because walking in the parks and on the beach in Vancouver reminds him of is native country. Italian, Japanese, and Colombian food are his favorite.
Gabriel is 19 years old and lives in a small city in Quebec. He has a passion for sports in general but his favorite sport is hockey. He also loves to travel, mostly in South America because it’s warm and gives him a chance to relax.
Nicolas, 20 is from Metabetchouan in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. He specializes in metallurgy at college. He likes sports especially snowboarding and wakeboarding. He is the second-oldest of three brothers. This is his second time in Vancouver. His first trip was done two months ago.
Vanessa is 20, attends Collège Laflèche and studies Early Childhood Education, which she loves. She has four sisters and one brother, her family is very important to her. She enjoys playing badminton, hockey and volleyball. Vanessa likes pizza, pasta and clubs. She also enjoys shopping.
Sophie comes from Beloeil. She studies at Cégep de Sainte-Hyacinthe in administration. Next year she will attend UQAM in Accounting Science. She has plans to travel and loves airplanes, cats and baseball. Her dream is to have a pilot’s license.
Joannie loves Kayaks and Nature.
Thi Thanh really enjoyed the Explore program and Vancouver’s culture, this being her first time experiencing both. She feels five weeks is not enough to learn English but has had fun improving.
Wilmar “the man that is in him” is a shy guy who likes to think. He also enjoys horror movies.
Amina loves to travel and is inspired by landscapes. He favorite architect is Carlos Scarpa.
Sitech is a self-proclaimed fly guy who has recently graduated from business school. He is pursuing a Master’s degree next year. He has a conventional number of arms and legs, looks like MJ according to some people and relates to birdman, the rapper.
Melanie G., 21, was born in Rivière-Du-Loup, a small city near the St. Lawrence river. She moved to Montréal last year. Melanie will start her studies in tourism this fall and recognizes that fluency in English will be very important in that field.
Frédéric loves dolphins, who are warm, smart, friendly animals. He relates to the enthusiasm he perceives from their smile-shaped mouths and knows a whole lot of information about these fascinating mammals.
Marcel is originally from Haiti, where his family still lives. He loves his country and hopes that his background in Economic Science as well as his interest in international politics will make him very useful to improve Haiti’s situation. He is studying at Université de Sherbrooke.
Sonia was born in Issoudun, a small city of 800 people. She currently lives in Charny, in Québec City. After completing her studies circa 2015, Sonia would like to work in Child Services. She would also like to intern outside of Québec to gain more experience in her field of study.
Roderick is 26 years old and he lives in Calgary and Montréal. He enrolled in the Explore program to learn french. In his five weeks of the program, Roderick saw someone walk into a lamppost. He made friend with Cora, Nicole, Kori, Elisabeth and Neda. His guilty pleasure is Sarah Palin and is favorite phrase in french is “Ben coudon!”.
Corazane is 22 years old and she lives in Ottawa. In her five weeks in the program and Vancouver the funniest thing that happened to her was sock wars. She was killed because she was drooling on a couch. She made friend with Teesha,Patricia, Chantal, Nicole and her guilty pleasure is shopping. Ohh, fresh salmon sashimi is her favourite Vancouver food.
Michael is 31 and he comes from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He feels that his grammatical French has improved. He also thinks that pizza is the best Vancouver food.
Aly was born in Vancouver but lives actually in Toronto. He’s 19 years old. The favorite food he experienced in Vancouver came from the SUB. He made a lot friends during the Explore program like Keltie, Anissa, Allisha, Hossein “Prince”, Adam, Abdul and Jessica. His guilty pleasure is Megan Fox and his favorite phrase in french is “ C’ta poile que je te veux”.
Melissa comes from Newfoundland she’s 24 years old. She feels that her French has really improved thanks to explore program. Her guilty pleasure his reading late at night with hot chocolate. The funniest thing that happened to her in Vancouver was when she got lost in East Hastings and ended up on the bus for 4.5 hours. The favorite food she experienced in Vancouver were the nachos at Foundation restaurant on Main street.
Kori comes from Calgary and he's 24 years old. He’s guilty pleasure is partying and champagne. In his five weeks of the program, Kori made a lot of friends but Roderick, Éli, Sitech, Corazane, Neda, Jean-Micheal and Pascale belong to his posse. He isn’t sure of his favorite food in Vancouver, but he loves Sushi and the food from Coast Restaurant.
Cassandre was born in Surrey but now she lives in Montréal, she is 21 years old and loves to say: “Ça m’énerve”. She also thinks that her listening skills in French have improved, thanks to the explore program. Her guilty pleasure is junk food but sushi is her favorite Vancouver food. In her five weeks in Vancouver, Cassandre met a lot of people and did a lot of stuff. However, performing a rap in her work shop was the funniest thing that happened to her. Maya, Aly, Lydia, Anita, Anna and Anissa are the sickest people she met in the explore program.
Maya is 24 years old she comes from Winnipeg. Her guilty pleasure is coffee - she actually drinks coffee in the morning, evening and at night. Her favorite sentence in french is “J’aime tu, ma petite chou." She doesn’t know what it means but it’s cool. Nothing funny happened to her and sushi is her favorite Vancouver Food. To conclude, Cassandre, Mary Kate and Melissa are in her posse.
Anna K. is 20 years old she lives in Toronto. Her guilty pleasure is chocolate but her favorite Vancouver food is sushi. She thinks that the funniest thing that happened in Vancouver is went her friends locked themselves in their room. Finally “enchanté!” is her favorite word in French.
Nicole is 19, she lives in Leanington, Ontario and she have in her posse Scott- “A-Dubs”-MacDonald, Chris- “Kicker”- Thomas and Herself aka Nicole- “BMO”- Torres. Her guilty pleasure is to listen to ABBA. She thinks that the funniest thing that happened in Vancouver was the writing and the preforming in English by the francophones. Megabite was her favorite Vancouver Food. Finally, “Ma t’en calicer une!!” is Nicole’s favorite French sentence.
Wen Shuo currently lives in Montréal. She thinks that her French has improved a lot thanks to the program. She also made some new friend like Nancy but she considers everyone in the program to be her friend. Sock wars was the funniest thing that happen to her because she needed to "kill" her best friend, Nancy. To conclude, Shuo really enjoyed the pizza, sushi and the frozen yogurt from Vancouver.
Anita’s guilty pleasure is listening to Justin Bieber’s song “Baby”. The funniest thing that’s happened to her in Vancouver is having nudists cheer her on as she was jogging along Wreck Beach. Her best friend from the program is Jennifer Kogan and her favorite French expression is “Allons-y”!
Mary Kate is 24 years old and comes from Upper Randon, Nova Scotia. Her guilty pleasure is reality televison. Her best friends in the program are her fellow Nova Scotians, Hillary and Shauna. The funniest thing that happened to her in Vancouver was when she went hiking up the Grouse Grind and fell from a rock after taking of photo on it. To conclude, “donc” is her favorite world in french because of the way it sounds.
People in Europe are more likely to speak multiple languages compared to North Americans. Why is that?
“Languages are much more important in Europe because as soon as you cross a border, there’s another spoken language,” said Dr. Francis Andrew, the director of UBC’s Explore program.
Founded in 1971 and sponsored by Canada’s federal government, the Explore program has helped many Canadians learn one of Canada’s two official languages. The Explore program provides Canadian students with a chance to spend five weeks in another Canadian province and meet other people whose main language is different than their own.
Dr. Francis Andrew began his career with the Explore program in 1976. When he first arrived, Dr. Andrew noticed cultural conflict between English and French-speaking peoples in Canada. Over the years, he has noticed a significant decline in such cultural clashes. It appears these differences have become less important.
One reason for this may be that the political situation is not the same than it was back in the 1970s. Hard feelings between English and French-speaking peoples in Canada have waned and the Quebec sovereignty movement has stagnated since its two defeats in referendums in 1980 and 1995. Another cause may be that with globalization, as Dr. Andrew conjectured, “Quebecers realized that they need English’’ if they want an international career. In other words, they “gain much more from this program than the Anglophones.”
But does multiculturalism affect the future of bilingualism and, by the same token, the Explore program? In other words, would it be more culturally relevant to Canadians to offer government-sponsored courses in unofficial languages that are more important to specific regions, such as offering Mandarin and Punjabi in British Columbia? “The supply and the demand are still not present,” claimed Dr. Andrew, and there are historical and cultural reasons why the federal government does not and probably will not sponsor such a program, at least in the immediate future. Dr. Andrew added that the creation of such a program would likely be within the jurisdiction of a provincial government.
Nearly forty years after its creation, the Explore program is still evaluating its existence. “It’s not well-funded," stated Dr. Andrew. "It’s not a money-making program.” Indeed, many universities throughout Canada have cancelled the program because they were not financially able to sustain it. Despite all of that, many improvements have been made. For instance, Dr. Andrew puts English and French programs together so that students can now interact more often.
The Explore program is a great opportunity to learn one of Canada’s two official languages. Although it does not necessarily erase all the differences between English and French-speaking peoples in Canada, it does foster greater tolerance, more open-mindedness, and a better understanding of the other solitude.
1. Most likely to have a liver failure by the end of the summer? Jonathan V. & Adam M. 2. Best dressed student? Valerie S. 3. Best dance moves? Philippe L. 4. Favourite teacher? Grant & Fréderick 5. Favourite monitor? Veronique & Andrea 6. Most likely to go nude at Wreck Beach? Nady E. 7. Most charming? Kori H. 8. Most likely to use their second language by the end of the program? Brady M. 9. Most improved in their second language? Kim S. 10. Class clown? Pascal L. 11. Best personality? Marc-André G. 12. Person with the best stories? Lisa M. 13. Most likely to stay best friends forever? Neda P. & Elisabeth G. 14. Most memorable event/trip/activity? WHISTLER 15. Best smile? Teesha P. 16. Most likely to take over the world? Ryan G. 17. Be an Explore monitor? Steve P. 18. Win Canadian Idol? Simon P. 19. Be Miss Canada? Jennifer I. 20. Be a professional athlete? Michael P.
"Textured Ground"
For this piece we decided to take pictures of "things that you walk on." Our group was sent out with no parameters other than to take three pictures at any angle under this bracket. Despite the often photographed natural beauty of Vancouver, what we have here are a selection of nine rather monotonous representations of surfaces that could have been taken from any number of places across the globe. The works are arranged from 'most natural' at the top left corner, to 'most un-natural' at the bottom right (although this is open to interpretation). Mirroring that of Vancouver imagery where the natural beauty of the mountains is often pictured with that of the man-made downtown core, in these works too we have the natural (represented by grass and rock) and the man-made (represented by carpet and synthetic rubber floor). What all these surfaces have in common is that rarely does the human skin come into direct contact with them; for the most part everything that we walk on does not force a sensation on the body, only indirectly via footwear."
Untitled (graffiti)
We chose a theme revolving around graffiti. The sheds located behind Ross have an array of artistic expression. While taking shots of the graffiti we began to notice a common theme portrayed in the graffiti. Themes of frustration, loneliness and solitude - evoked through emotional poetry, frantic spraypainting, and the ticking watch- were developed in the graffiti. For this project, we enjoyed taking pieces of the graffiti artists' expressions and arranging them into a piece of our own, combining the emotions of many individuals into a single piece of art work.
The Book of Knowledge
We chose to focus our picture series on the various architectural aspects of the UBC Library. The three pictures at the bottom of the series show structures made of concrete. This represents a strong architectural base for the building which also portrays a strong base for education. As we move up in the series, the centre pictures depict the access way into the library, where students can advance their studies. The pictures at the top of the series are mainly structures made of glass. The glass allows students to see the world of possibilities that are available outside; the sun is able to illuminate a pathway to our futures.
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