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1st baby born in Vancouver Lower Mainland – Tasha Barham!
“Todd – come watch tv!” shouted my parents excitedly. “It's Rod.”
“What's going on?” I asked.
My
friend Rod Barham was being interviewed on Global News. He was
holding his two year old son Thomas. The reporter was asking him
about his new daugther, the first child born in Vancouver's Lower
Mainland for 2007.
The
camera also showed mother Mimi Yui holding baby Tasha Elizabeth
Barham. Tasha looked well with a healthy head of black
hair. Mimi sounded very cool and unfazed.
It
was just Dec 23rd when I called Rod on the phone, asking him how the
baby was coming along. His parents had walked into the library
where I was working that day, and I had showed them a picture of me
holding my own new niece born on Halloween morning.
“It might be New Year's Day,” he replied.
Rod
and I have been friends since about 1994 when he moved into a shared
accomodation with us beside Burnaby Lake. Rod attended my first
“friends only” Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner in 1998, following a Chinese
New Year dinner in our home in 1997.
Rod
and Mimi met in 1997, when I convinced Rod to join a dragon boat team
that I was coaching. Mimi was already one of the paddlers on the
team. Four years later, in 2000, they held their wedding at the
Alcan Dragon Boat Festival site. After the festival had shut down for
the evening, Rod picked up Mimi at the Science World water ferry dock,
with a dragon boat full of ex-team mate paddlers.
I
was best man, MC, and music director. As the dragon boat was
paddled back to the Plaza of Nations dock, with Rod steering, and Mimi
sitting in her wedding dress, I played O Solo Mio on my accordion from
the steps above the dock. It was a beautiful wedding. The
reception was fun too, filled with friends and family.
Congratulations
to Rod and Mimi for having the first 2007 baby born in Vancouver's
Lower Mainland. A baby born of Chinese and English (and maybe Scots)
descent!
Rod sent me this e-mail:
Hey Toddnik. Thanks for the email eh!
What a kick New Years has been. I am amazed how many people watch the
news as total strangers keep coming up to me and giving me their
congratulations. Who would have
One thing I would have added to your
biography is how you managed to get me to join the team – very
reluctantly! Fortunately you persisted and voila! A child is born!
See this story from 24 Hours:
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By ROBYN STUBBS, 24 HOURS
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It's a girl!
A proud – and understandably tired – Burnaby couple was busy
celebrating yesterday after the birth of their daughter went down in
the books as the Lower Mainland's first baby of 2007.
Weighing in at eight pounds, Tasha Margaret Barham made her
grand entrance at 12:03 a.m. on Jan. 1 at New Westminster's Royal
Columbian Hospital.
She's a “good baby so far, not fussing at all,” said mother
Mimi Yui yesterday, adding the labour was painful but thankfully quick
at just three-and-a-half-hours long.
Yui and her husband, Rod Barham, already parents to
20-month-old Thomas, both thought three minutes past midnight would be
too late for Tasha to be the New Year's baby, but “with kids,
everything is a surprise,” said Barham with a smile.
wow! i can't believe it was you who linked them!
looks like you know every newsworthy people in town! 😀