5th Annual Mike Gibson Memorial Golf Tournament

On June 13th, 2015 family, friends, and fellow golfers will gather for the 5th Annual Mike Gibson Memorial Golf (MGMG) Tournament to raise funds for the Canucks Place Children’s Hospice. The Tournament was started in June 2011 following the death of Vera Gibson’s son Mike who, alongside his high school sweetheart Kelly Pockett, were involved in an accident that took both of their lives while driving back from the family cabin near Penticton.

Each year about 65 participants ranging in age from teens to late sixties enter the Texas Scramble format tournament, which allows players of all skill sets to participate in a fun filled round of 18 holes. Following the tournament portion with prizes up for grabs, there’s a family style BBQ and silent auction / raffle hosted at the Gibson’s cabin. To date, $15,529 has been raised with no plans to end the tournament anytime soon. Vera says that the Canucks Place Children’s Hospice was specifically chosen because “helping other families who are dealing with challenging circumstances feels like a good fit.”

Mike-Gibson-Golf-Tournament-Group-Shot

This year, after realizing that a windsurfing board and laminated photo of Mike used to promote the tournament was on its last leg, Vera visited The Flag Shop Vancouver to inquire about pricing for a custom flag that would be able to replace the damaged board. After coming across Vera during her in store visit (unaware that she was there to explore signage options), President Susan Braverman, touched by the story behind the tournament and Vera’s ability to turn her loss into something positive was happy to donate a flag of Vera’s choice. The final product – a feather flag specially designed for the tournament – speaks for itself!

Feather-Banner

With no official sponsors or staff, the tournament is truly a labor of love. As not only the main organizer but also an accomplished writer and certified life coach, Vera sees her involvement as an investment of time that would have been spent in other ways if Mike were still here. Instead of celebrating future birthdays and holidays together scattered over the years, Vera’s planning and hard work is a condensed ball of energy that gets poured into the weeks leading up to the event and on the tournament day every year. Although the pain that comes from losing a loved one never disappears, we couldn’t image a better way to celebrate Mike’s precious memory. Thank you for letting us be a part of your wonderful event!

If you know of a special event or charity that needs banners or signage, contact us to discuss how we can help your organization shine.

Working together to end bullying

Susan Braverman, President of The Flag Shop, was bullied in grade 8 and will never forget the trauma of having to change schools to escape the torment. She was one of the lucky ones who had the support of her family to help her through a devastating period, but not everyone does. Ever since then, Susan has been conscious of what bullying can do to people.

In early 2014, The Flag Shop was asked to produce a flag based on the winning design for a Pink Shirt Day competition submitted by Grace Fenton, a Grade 7 student from New Brunswick. Susan immediately knew that she had found the perfect design to represent The Flag Shop’s Anti-Bullying Campaign, an initiative that all 13 shops across Canada were strongly committed to championing.

img-antibullying-susanBy the end of 2014, The Flag Shop was granted exclusive rights to use Grace Fenton’s design for any campaigns that would help communicate the important message that “Bullying is not acceptable and needs to be stopped.”

The Flag Shop team was ecstatic because Grace’s design offers a positive message representing helping those who need our help. It is easily understood by everyone.

Bullying is a serious problem, whether it’s happening at school, at work, on the internet or for racial, sexual or other predatory reasons. This problem is much bigger than people may be aware of or willing to admit, and The Flag Shop is committed to spreading the message that EVERY DAY IS ANTI-BULLYING DAY!

At The Flag Shop, we believe that business is about more than just the bottom line. With the launch of our Anti-Bullying Initiative, we are doing what we can to raise awareness across Canada that bullying behaviour is unacceptable.

The Flag Shop Anti-Bullying products price points have been established to enable fundraising initiatives across Canada, whether it be for your school, workplace, or social group. In addition, partial proceeds from every Anti-Bullying product sold will go into a fund to support product donations for Anti-Bullying awareness efforts.

The entire Flag Shop team is committed to spreading this Anti-Bullying message! We will continue to add new products based on Grace’s design and over time, as our fund grows, our capability to accept donation requests for products to support Anti-Bullying campaigns will increase. Donation requests can be submitted at any of our Flag Shop locations, from coast to coast.

The Flag Shop is committed to raising awareness that bullying behaviour inflicts tremendous damage, and while we cannot change the past, we can do our part to influence the future. With the support of our fellow Canadians, we will strive for to make our already amazing country BECOME BULLY FREE – a country where EVERY DAY IS ANTI-BULLYING DAY!

All of The Flag Shop’s Anti-Bullying products are available online and at each of the 13 Flag Shop locations across Canada.

See www.antibullyingflag.ca for more information.

We are PROUDLY CANADIAN!

Press Release: THE FLAG SHOP JUMPS ON BOARD TO SUPPORT ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES ACROSS CANADA (PDF)

Supporting the public school teachers of BC

We are publicly throwing our support behind BC’s public school teachers who are currently on strike.

We are very busy trying to get this organized, but those of you in BC can join our Facebook group set up for organizing the campaign here. We are also posting updates to our twitter account and our main Facebook page.

We will have a press release as well as other materials soon.

Catch Susan on CBC’s Early Edition tomorrow at 7:20 a.m. on 88.1 FM and 690 AM.

Introducing the Canadian Native Flag

The Canadian Native Flag

June 21st is Aboriginal Day in Canada. This Aboriginal Day is the debut of Curtis Wilson’s Canadian Native Flag.

Susan Braverman, President of The Flag Shop, has worked with Curtis to bring his design for a flag to represent First Nations in Canada to the public. We hope this flag brings a better understanding of the First Nations of our country and a vision for a unified Canada that still revels in its diversity.

Read Curtis’s account of how he created the flag including his family’s rich history in Canada and the flag’s symbolism.

The current product availability includes:

18″x20″ and 27″x54″ flags 3″x6″ recycled paper flags
Lapel pins Temporary tattoos

The Flag Shop is the manufacturer and exclusive supplier of the flag. It is available online as well as in our thirteen stores across Canada.

Sign up for the Canadian Native Flag mailing list to find out about other products as they come available.

Some of our more personal jobs

We regularly put up street banners are up across the city. Our flags wave from a multitude of municipal flagpoles across the country. These are some of our day-to-day jobs.

While we are invited to participate in municipal life as part of our stock in trade, sometimes we find ourselves involved in more personal projects.

A couple of years ago, we made a beautiful custom chuppah for a wedding.

Custom Chuppah

And this week, we were contacted to make a banner to honour the life of a beloved member of the Vancouver community. We are honoured to have been chosen to make the flag and banner to commemorate the life of North Shore Rescue team leader Tim Jones.

His celebration of life on Saturday, January 25th includes a parade at 10:30 a.m. and ceremony at noon.

Donations in Tim Jones’s memory can be made to North Shore Search and Rescue at https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/3gPPf.

Thank you, Tim, for your service, and thank you, North Shore Rescue, for letting us participate.

First Nations art street banners for Kelowna

Bernard Avenue in Kelowna recently got an upgrade with the addition of new street banners featuring First Nations art. The banners feature five different designs with art by Janine Lott and Jordan Coble.

Kelowna Banners

Photo from WelcometoKelowna

Here is a better look at the designs:

Kelowna Banner Designs

Read the stories here:

http://www.welcometokelowna.com/news/news/Local_News/13/11/26/New_Banners_on_Bernard_Ave_Display_Beauty_of_Westbank_First_Nations_Art

http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/front-page-news/bernard-ave-celebrates-first-nations-culture-112713.html

Throwback Friday – Battlestar Galactica edition

Battlestar Galactica

We’ve had this photo in our gallery for a long time, sitting there without much context. It’s from a job we did almost a decade ago for the Battlestar Galactica miniseries/pilot.

You can watch the scene it was in here. And here‘s an old industry article written about us and our involvement with it.

You can see more flags and banners we made for film and television in our gallery.

What happens if you don’t have a working art file.

Before Christmas, we had a request come in for a family crest flag. The only problem was that the reference for the crest was a physical three-dimensional plaque! Using that as a guide, we put together the art file using heraldic elements and then hand-drew the rest as needed.

The end result? See for yourself:

Close Flag - custom made - before and after

Art services are just another part of our dedication to customer satisfaction!

Banner redesign? We can do that.

When the Punjabi Market on Main Street wanted new street banners to replace some of their aging ones, there was a bit of a kerfuffle with getting the original artwork from 2003. Our marketing manager/designer/all around wunderkind, Crystal, was given the task of ensuring that the new art had all the same elements as the old art but modernized to take advantage of being digitally printed instead of screenprinted like the originals. As you can see, the original design was less intricate while the new design is more vibrant and detailed.

 
Original design from 2003   New design now up in Punjabi Market

Also, she did this in about 90 minutes in case you were wondering about the sheer amount of talent we have on board here.

Custom flag for One Epic Journey’s ride to conquer cancer

We are excited to show off the flag we have donated to the One Epic Journey team who are doing the 2012 Ride to Conquer Cancer that goes from Vancouver to Seattle in June. Team captain Bill deGroot got some of the staff to pose with the flag before it left the building.

One Epic Journey flag

One Epic Journey will be carrying the flag across the start and finish lines of the event as well as flying it at their campsite between legs. They have just passed the $20k mark in fundraising, and their ultimate goal is $25k which I am sure they will reach. We wish them the best of luck on the ride!