For 55-plus people who want to connect with others in Surrey, Belinda’s Connection Café events are a good place to start.
Newton Cultural Centre is where the monthly gatherings take place on select Thursday mornings, when Lyn Verra-Lay organizes arts-related activities and guest speakers. Admission is free, and the sessions have grown more popular over the past three years.
"We started doing these in March 2022, and so far we've done 34 workshops and reached close to 90 seniors between age 55 and 94, quite a range of people and events," said Verra-Lay, an award-winner artist and 2017 B.C. Culture Days ambassador.
"I invite different facilitators that maybe I haven't met before, so I'm also connecting with a new person in the community. There are a lot of connections that are happening. That's why 'connection' in Belinda's Connection Café is the most important word."
The events have covered journalling, karaoke singing, music and movement, Indigenous mini drums, storytelling, dyed-silk pieces, game boards and more. Future "Connections" involve fused glass with Studio 73 (Feb. 27), mendhi with Teejita Gupta (March 27), mixed-media collage with Asma and Lyn (April 24), crocheted coasters with Tanya Liu (May 22) and sun prints with Desmond Tompkins (June 26), before a summer break.
On Thursday (Jan. 23), the focus was on tea sommelier Satbir Thind, who runs Sattea Mobile Tea Boutique, along with "Tea Time Stories" and the special tea cups of those who attended.
Linda Page brought a century-old teacup that family members brought here from England years ago.
"I've just started coming here (to Connection Café events) six months ago," Page said. "I have a friend in a wheelchair that I don't see very often, and we get the Handydart to come once a month. We like all different kinds of art forms, and we're both seniors on low-income, so this is a great event to come socialize and learn things, like what we learned today about tea, all kinds of stories."
Retiree KC Gilroy, former co-ordinator of Surrey Christmas Bureau, attended Thursday for the first time, and brought a mug with meaning.
"When you have kids, you can never predict what they're gonna do, so my middle daughter moved to Poland in 1999, and in 2004 I went to visit her and she bought me this cup. So whenever I see it, it reminds me of her. Coincidentally, about a half an hour before this event, she happened to call me and I said, 'Well, I'm taking your cup for a ride to a teacup story event,' so it was really neat. She's half a world away and it's hard to see her, so I can see her in this cup."
Gilroy is glad that she kept the mug, and urged others to do the same with special things they have around the house.
"Earlier I mentioned that we're all being urged to declutter, declutter, but there are some precious things you do keep, and we should probably be careful what we declutter," she explained. "If it means something to you, if it means a story, then keep that and remind yourself of the people that were important to you, or the events that were important to you. This was a good event for that, and in my case I was surprised to know several people here. I didn't expect that because I've been retired for a while, not involved in the community as much, and suddenly they're all here. It's great."
Back in 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, Verra-Lay worked as an emergency-response community builder for United Way.
"One of our things we needed to do was make sure that we connected with isolated seniors — do groceries for them, phone calls with them, sometimes hour-long phone calls, and just to make sure that people were still connecting with them," she said. "After the pandemic, I wanted to make sure that seniors remained connected. With my arts background, it was sort of a no-brainer that we would do some arts-related workshops once a month to help keep them connected."
Verra-Lay now organizes summer Connection Café events in North Delta, where she lives, and will expand to South Surrey starting Feb. 12, via Semiahmoo Arts Society, thanks to grants from different sources including United Way, the federal New Horizons program and Arts Council of Surrey.
At Newton Cultural Centre, the workshops run from 10 a.m. to noon. People should register at least a week prior (email lyn.verra.lay@gmail.com or call 778-879-4097). Visit the Belinda's Connection Café Facebook group for details, or facebook.com/semiahmooartssociety. Info is also found on artscouncilofsurrey.ca/tag/belindas-cafe.
Three years ago, wen a name was needed for the sessions for seniors in Newton, Verra-Lay chose to honour someone who’d hosted events that connected people in the community.
“We really liked Connection Café as the name, and then I was talking to a friend of mine (Lorraine Busch), and her mom, who’d died a year previous, her name just came into my head,” Verra-Lay recalled. “Belinda (Dunne), she died two years ago now, and lived in Delta, and did similar things in the community to connect people – tea parties for seniors, things like that, and she was very community-minded, as is her whole family. She’s an inspiration to me, so we named it after her.”
Verra-Lay is always thrilled when connections are made at events she hosts and plans.
"One of our dance groups that rehearses in the building here, I asked her if she could do a seated Indian classical dance workshop, because some of our participants are not always mobile," she recalled. "So she did, and she dressed up and did a lovely dance for us, and then she did something that was just with arm movements. That was a very popular (workshop), and one of the women who attended ended up taking solo dance classes with her, which is something she probably wouldn't have done if she had not made that connection here. You know, another connection made."
