Blog | Transcend Design

Gingerbread 2020: Waterfront Station

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021
by brucen

In 2009, I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces. Since then I’ve made a number of gingerbread houses, including 2011’s Urban Brownstone, the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in 2012, the Stewart Farmhouse in 2016, the Hotel Europe in 2017, the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2018, and the Woodward’s Building in 2019.

Waterfront Station, photo taken at Granville and Cordova

This year, for the sixth time, I decided to make my own designs for a gingerbread structure. My inspiration is Waterfront Station, located at the foot of Seymour, on West Cordova.

There were some late nights trying to get this one completed. This project took over 10 pounds of gingerbread dough to bake all of the pieces. I used isomalt (a sugar substitute) to pour all of the the windows this year. The only issue was that the windows did melt away after some time due to the humid winter rain we’ve had.

Originally the Pacific terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Waterfront Station is now the last stop on Translink’s Expo Line, Canada Line, as well as the West Coast Express, and the Seabus.

The original building opened in 1914, and was designed in neoclassical style, with a distinctive red brick facade, and ionic columns. When our family moved from Port Alberni to Vancouver in 1984, my parents ran the local newsstand, Western Confectionery. Legend has it that the building is haunted by many ghosts.

Thank you for following along with this one – this building holds a special place as I have many memories of the time spent there. It’s always fun to create something that people enjoy.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2024: The Prince George Hotel

January 28, 2025January 28, 2025
by brucen

In 2009, I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces. Since then I’ve made a number of gingerbread houses, including Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in 2012, Waterfront Station in 2020, Irving House in 2021, and The Hermitage Winter Palace in 2022.

This is my take on the Prince George Hotel, which is located in Kingston, Ontario. I was inspired by the documentary “The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal” which told the story of the Hip’s arc from local band to national treasure. RIP Gord Downie, one of the best.

The building was built in 1820. It features slightly elevated ground floor, veranda, and a symmetrical front facade. The tallest part is the mansard tower, which features a few curved pieces of gingerbread – always a challenge to bake, and circular bullseye dormers.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2023: Fort Langley Community Hall

January 28, 2025January 28, 2025
by brucen

In 2009, I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces. Since then I’ve made a number of gingerbread houses, including Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in 2012, Waterfront Station in 2020, Irving House in 2021, and The Hermitage Winter Palace in 2022.

My inspiration this year is the Fort Langley Community Hall. The town hall is an historic heritage building in the picturesque and romantic downtown of Fort Langley. Construction on this building finished in 1931. If the building looks familiar, it has appeared in a number of movies and TV shows, including a half dozen Hallmark movies. A city girl returns to her small town roots, and the local carpenter .. oh you haven’t seen that one?

The design fairly closely replicates the original building, just squished for scale. The decorations included fondant for the siding, and sour strips for the gabled front of the building, and roof shingles. The same sour strips provided the red brick work on the chimney stacks.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2022: Hermitage Museum – The Winter Palace

February 20, 2023January 11, 2024
by brucen

In 2009, I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces. Since then I’ve made a number of gingerbread houses, including Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in 2012, Waterfront Station in 2020, and Irving House in 2021.

My inspiration this year is The Winter Palace of The State Hermitage Museum. The palace is an historic art gallery and museum located in St. Petersburg, Russia. Designed by architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli in Baroque style, the palace has a green and white facade, and a tree-lined courtyard in the middle.

This is the largest gingerbread structure I’ve completed to date. This was a massively scaled-down design so that I could fit it onto the board. Challenging, but a fun project to complete!

The design included interior courtyard walls, as well as exterior walls. The decorations included innumerable isomalt windows decorated with mini M&Ms, and royal icing. The courtyard trees were made from Rice Krispie treats, on shredded coconut grass.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2021: Irving House

February 20, 2022January 11, 2024
by brucen

In 2009, I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces. Since then I’ve made a number of gingerbread houses, including Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in 2012, the Stewart Farmhouse in 2016, the Hotel Europe in 2017, the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2018, the Woodward’s Building in 2019, and Waterfront Station in 2020.

My inspiration this year is Irving House, a heritage site in New Westminster. It is a one and a half storey tall building, and is known to be the oldest house in the Lower Mainland still completely intact! It still stands today in the original location on Royal Avenue.

Built in 1865 for Captain William Irving, the City of New Westminster has owned the house since 1950, and it has since operated as a local heritage centre. The house has mixed Gothic features that were popular in 1800s, but rarely seen in BC as not many buildings have survived from this period.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2019: Woodward’s Building

January 17, 2020January 18, 2021
by brucen

This year, for the fifth time, I decided to make my own designs for a gingerbread structure. My inspiration is the Woodward’s Building, which brings fond Christmas memories for many people.

At one time this was the premiere shopping destination in Vancouver. The store was famous for its Christmas window displays, and the rotating “W” at the top of the building.

The original building was completed in 1903, and was one of the pioneers of one-stop shopping. In the 1960’s, Woodward’s decline began as people began shopping in suburban shopping malls. In 1993, Woodward’s went bankrupt. The closing of this store accelerated the decline of Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. Finally, in 2010, construction of a new mixed-use complex was completed. The brick facade is all that remains of the original building at the corner of Abbott and West Hastings.

I remember walks with our family around the holiday season, peering in the windows of all the Christmas displays. Still a wonderful time in our memories.

A huge thank you to everyone who follows along every year. Hopefully there are others that also have childhood memories of this historic landmark.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2018: Vancouver Art Gallery

December 30, 2018January 17, 2021
by brucen

This year, for the fourth time, I decided to make my own designs for a gingerbread structure. My inspiration is one of the more recognizable buildings in the downtown area – the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The Vancouver Art Gallery is the largest art gallery in Western Canada. The building used to be the main courthouse in Vancouver. Due to the massive scale of the building, I did need to pare down the scale. I did manage to keep many of the original design features, including the central dome, ionic columns, stonework, and the main front portico.

Again, thank you to everyone who follows along every year. While there are some late nights in December (and sometimes January!), it’s always fun to create something that people enjoy.

Gingerbread Creations

Gingerbread 2017: Hotel Europe

January 30, 2018January 17, 2021
by brucen

This year, for the third time, I decided to make my own designs for a gingerbread structure. My inspiration came from a real heritage building in Vancouver’s famous Gastown area – the Hotel Europe.

Hotel Europe is a six-story heritage building located at Powell and Alexander in Vancouver, British Columbia. The building was commissioned by hotelier Angelo Calori and completed in 1909 by Parr and Fee Architects. The building is designed in the flatiron style.

This specific building style has only a few pieces, but each is quite large. The entire design has over 100 windows.

The baked gingerbread. I baked other pieces “on the fly” as it was difficult to measure in advance.

Trying out a brick design. The bricks are all cut from Sour Straps candy.

Each of the large side walls is at least 50 inches long. Lots of bricks!

Assembling the walls. This is easier with pins, which allow the icing to dry with the walls in place.

All of the walls are up, with some structural beams in the middle.

Roof is decorated with sanding sugar. Also added trim, and a Sour Gum sidewalk.

Added hand rail around the sidewalk – Popeye Candy Sticks with thin licorice rope.

Detail shot of the start of the road. Sour and regular Gummy Coke Bottles, cut into brick shapes.

Start of an idea for street lamps – pearlized gumballs with Blueberry Candy Sticks.

Finished – lower angle photo from the front.

Thank you to everyone who follows along every year. While there are some late nights in December (and sometimes January!), it’s always fun to create something that people enjoy.

Canucks

Canucks Pumpkin 2017 – #Brocktober

October 31, 2017December 11, 2017
by brucen

The play of Canucks rookie Brock Boeser inspired this year’s pumpkin carving. Since it’s October and Boeser is having a great start to his rookie season, #Brocktober only seems natural!

I began with a photo of Brock Boeser. Using Photoshop, I modified the photo to black and white, then increased the contrast on the photo and repeated that process until only a few shades remain: black, white and some easily discernible areas of grey. From there, I roughly shaded the areas of darkness on the pumpkin.

Here I began carving the pumpkin. Remember that when carving, the thinnest areas will appear lightest, and the thickest areas will appear darkest. For the areas that will be the darkest, only a thin layer of the hull is shaven off. For the areas that are lighter, I carved deeper.

The carving process continues deeper. Each time I carved specific areas I would do a quick lighting test. A LED light inside the pumpkin is helpful. For the hair, I did not shave off any of the hull; instead, I carved lines that followed the sweet flow of Brock’s hair. More lines means more light could come through.

Here things are looking great. The only parts of the face that I did not carve the hull of the pumpkin are the hair, and the pupils of the eyes, which should be black. The only areas that are carved right through are the whites of the eyes. Everything else is a varying depth of carve that will determine the amount of light coming through.

The finished pumpkin as featured on Bardown and Sportsnet! No effects on the photograph, just a longer shutter opening to capture more light.

Baseball

White Rock 11U AAA Team – 2017 Provincial Champs!

August 8, 2017January 30, 2018
by brucen

The White Rock 11U AAA Tier 1 Tritons won the provincial title on the August long weekend in Cloverdale, capping off an amazing 26-1 season.

The tournament began on the Friday against Cloverdale, with the boys coming back to win a hard fought game 9-8. The game was highlighted by a 1st inning 3-run homer from Ben McKinnon to keep the game close, scoring Matty Ng and Vasya Seymour. In the 2nd, the hit parade continued, with Max Ross hitting a triple to score Austin Hexter. Consecutive doubles by Ben, then Jack Clayton pushed the score to 7-4 White Rock. Later in bottom of the 5th, White Rock found themselves down 8-7 when Vasya hit a game-tying solo shot on the first pitch of the inning. Tyson Craven had the go-ahead RBI on a double. Ben then entered the game in the top of the 6th to preserve the win.

Friday afternoon, White Rock had a statement game, shutting out Nanaimo 15-0. Zak Burden and Max Ross pitched a combined no-hitter, as the team played error-free defence behind them. Matty had a big day at the plate, going 3-for-3 with 2 doubles and a homer, good for 5 RBI on the game.

On Saturday morning, the team suffered their first loss of the season, losing to Abbotsford in a slugfest. The boys jumped out to a lead in the 1st inning on a RBI single by Garin Wickstrom, but found themselves trailing going to the top of the 6th. Jack hit a solo shot, and Sam Manship scored with some heads up base running on a passed ball to make it close, but the final ended up as 11-8 for Abbotsford, setting up a must-win game later in the day.

Saturday evening, the boys punched their ticket to the playoff round with a 13-2 win against Kamloops. Max Ross came to the mound in the 2nd inning, and pitched an efficient 4 innings, using just 51 pitches, and allowing just one earned run. In this game, Danny Berringer hit a long double off the fence, and had 3 RBI on the day. The game ended on a dramatic walk-off grand slam homer by Ben in the bottom of the 5th to put the mercy rule into effect.

Sunday morning’s semi-final game showed that this team scores from anywhere in the lineup. 9 different Tritons players had at least one RBI, and every single player scored at least one run in a 19-6 win. White Rock had 4 home runs in this game – Ben with 2, while Danny and Sam Persaud hit one each.

The final game was a back-and-forth affair, with White Rock coming back from 1-0 and 3-1 deficits to eventually tie the game and win the championship in extra innings. After Abbotsford took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 2nd, with 2 outs in the top of the 3rd, Matty hit a long double off the top of the left field fence, scoring Zak to tie the game. Top of the 4th with 2 out, trailing 3-1, Jack launched a huge solo homer to straight away center, hitting the concession stand before it landed.

The Tritons were still down 3-2 until the top of the 6th inning, their last chance to tie. Matty reached on a walk, and advanced to 3rd on consecutive passed balls. Vasya Seymour then sacrificed on a grounder to the 1st base side, scoring Matty to force extra innings.

The game stayed tied until the top of the 8th inning. Then, as they have done all season long, the Tritons started a long rally – this time from the 8 spot in the order. After Sam Manship grounded out, Sam Persaud singled on a liner to left, Max Ross singled on a beautiful bunt, and Danny walked to load the bases. Persaud scored the go-ahead run on a passed ball, while Zak battled hard but popped out on an 8 pitch at-bat for the second out. With 2 outs and 2 on base, Austin Hexter hit a towering fly to right for a 2-RBI double, making the score 6-3 Tritons. Matty, Vasya, and Ben all singled to run the score to 9-3 when the inning ended on a strikeout.

Abbotsford rallied for 2 runs in the bottom of the 8th, but the game ended when Austin fielded a grounder at 3rd and threw to Zak at 1st base for the final out. Persaud and McKinnon had combined to pitch a great 8 innings, each of them striking out 7 batters.

This team went undefeated in all their tournaments, and all their league games throughout July. Their only loss on the season was to Abbotsford in the provincials. The hallmarks of this team are depth of pitching, and hard hitting from anywhere in the lineup. All 12 of the players on this team threw from the mound in a game, and all 12 had the power to hit the ball out of the park.

Huge thank you goes out to the great group of families that were so dedicated, and all of the players that put in the work, and were so determined to learn and grow throughout the season. Congratulations to all of the White Rock baseball teams this summer!