Skateboard Week in Vancouver, Canada is Official

It’s officially Skateboarding Week in Vancouver June 15-22

With this upcoming Sunday being Go Skateboarding Day and Emerica’s Wild in the Streets, we’ve had the City of Vancouver officially declare this week, June 15-22 as “Skateboarding Week” to recognize the importance of the sport in the city.

A couple of lines from the official proclamation:

Whereas this year, 15 professional skateboarders will be joining over 5,000 young and old skateboarders around the city to celebrate their passion during the annual Go Skateboard Day, which will feature events throughout the city. Now therefore, I, Mayor Gregor Robertson, on behalf of the City of Vancouver, do hereby proclaim June 15 – 22, 2009 as “Skateboarding Week” to recognize the importance of this sport in our city.

It’s times like this when we’d like to acknowledge the hard work of those on the Vancouver Skateboard Coalition, as well as the tireless work from those at City Hall, the Vancouver Park Board – both at the Commissioner’s level, and also at the staff level, including Piet Rutgers, and especially Mark Vulliamy for dedicating the past decade to our cause. Past Park Board Commissioners we’d also like to take time out to thank include Alan DeGenova and Lindsay Popes. If it weren’t for all of these people, I can assure you Vancouver would not be the skate mecca that it’s known as today. So, much thanks go out to you all.

Commisioner Plyth even went as far as to state:

“Skateboarding has come so far. Only ten years ago it was illegal to skateboard in the streets, skateboards were being confiscated and ticketing boarders. Skateboarders were buying boards with no place to use them.

We are now are working from a skateboard strategy to give skaters alternatives. In the past ten years we have seen 6 new parks and a relaxation of the ban on skateboarding in the streets. Vancouver is now a meccaa for skateboarding and people come from all over the world to use our skateboard parks. This year we will see another skateboard park at Kensington Community Center. I would also like to see an indoor youth facility to accomodate, skateboarding, BMX and rollerskating for the rainy months.”