Out the Door

26 July 2026 – It is no longer hot and not yet raining. I am out the door.

Out the door with only the vaguest of plans, but at least the intention to capitalize on this moment of walkable weather. False Creek north shore why not, but farther on down the creek than my casual Cambie Loop and a return by ferry. Also why not.

Lots of flexibility in the plan, which I promptly celebrate with an extra loop into/around City Centre Artist Lodge — long a city motel, slated for razing & redevelopment, meanwhile the entire complex is covered in murals and its 79 units are reborn as low-rent artist studios.

Rivers of colour, on the walls and on the ground.

When I get to real water, it is silver-grey.

I’m now at False Creek, the eastern end that proves it is a false creek not a real creek at all, just a whopping long inlet, and here’s the end of it. To my east Science World; at my back Creekside Park; immediately west of that, an exercise in PR:

The map excludes Creekside Park since this development corporation didn’t create it, but it does feature their own “Community Pop-Up Park” right next door. I grr-grr slightly about the use of “pop-up” to describe a park that will continue to be here for some years yet — even as I recognize it’s an exercise in managing expectations. Don’t get too comfy, folks! it tells us; we will eventually be building on this land.

But not yet. So, meanwhile, I eye the map and let it inspire me. I’ll at least walk past Cambie Bridge and Coopers’ Park, at least to David Lam Park. Maybe farther?

I don’t know it yet, but the answer is yes. Farther.

I’ll carry on past George Wainborn Park, under those two distant bridges (Granville and Burrard, respectively), past this map’s named territory, all the way to Sunset Beach before doubling back to a ferry dock at the Aquatic Centre.

Probably under the joint influence of map plus planned ferry-ride home, I begin noting where I am in terms of those two sets of landmarks.

Parq Casino, for example, with its splendid reflections…

is located just behind the Plaza of Nations ferry dock, east of Coopers’ Park.

A bit farther west, mid-park, I eye this dragon boat in some amazement. It’s just sitting there! I’m used to seeing them furiously in motion.

I want motion? I get it.

Coopers’ Park (on the footprint of Sweeney Cooperage and Saw Mill, which operated here until 1981) includes a playground, right under Cambie Bridge. The playground is closed these days, for upgrade work on the bridge — but that doesn’t mean nobody is playing.

Skateboard city on the detour path! With two young skateboarders taking turns, and one photographer filming their jumps.

Watching Seawall action, yet another crow, on yet another lamp post.

I happen to see him as I approach the Yaletown dock, midway between Coopers’ and David Lam parks, but he could be anywhere.

Each time I’m at the Yaletown dock, I read another of the incised historical vignettes. This one reminds us of the Great Fire of 1886, when a fire set to clear brush instead razed the entire community.

(Reader alert: I later look up further references, including the link above, and discover discrepancies in the data, even in the June date itself. )

More small discoveries as I go, including this mini-causeway as I round the curve that will give me my first view of the eastern end of David Lam Park. (It’s been here all along; I’ve just never noticed it.)

The David Lam shoreline contains two of my favourite False Creek sculptures — more precisely, the twin elements that comprise one art installation: Marking High Tide and Waiting for Low Tide, by retired landscaped architect turned sculptor Donald Vaughan.

I pause to read, as always, the words written around the High Tide concrete ring, set on tall pillars. “As the moon circles the earth the oceans respond with the rhythm of the tide.”

This time I also note, crossly, how grubby it now looks. I’m all for new installations, all for upgrades — but could we please also maintain what we already have? Even if you just give them a scrub, every now and then?

On west I go, on and on west, past George Wainborn Park and under the Granville Bridge…

with its slam-damn view of all the activity across the water on Granville Island, in the water itself, and among the marinas and complexes here on the north side.

Things are markedly tonier than they were farther east, and private property suddenly disrupts the public Seawall. Arrows direct us around these towers; signs politely tell us that if we instead insist on walking through the grounds, we are to keep moving.

I walk through. I stop moving long enough to contemplate the sidewalk promo for Ancora, which on one side advertises its sake/oyster offerings, and on the other…

invites diners to bring their dogs.

I decide not to spend time sulking about the fact that dogs are more welcome, in this enclave, than I am.

My non-sulk policy is promptly rewarded. Back on public-access Seawall territory, at the foot of Hornby Street, I see a cheerful, handwritten invitation to walk half a block up Hornby and visit the inBtwn Café. I am charmed. I walk the half-block.

It is indeed a tiny café, clearly a local hangout, with a DIY artistic vibe. Ancora offers sake and oysters; inBtwn offers watercolour paint-pots and brushes. People use them.

I settle for a latte, not artistic expression, but I do ask co-owner Christy Evans about the backstory. She had hospitality experience, and COVID pushed her to act on what she meant by “hospitality”: bake treats to go with the coffee, create a community hub for socializing, give people resources for creative expression while they are socializing and eating treats and drinking coffee. Eventually husband and co-owner Wade Edwards quit his construction business and joined her full-time — as an artist (whose works always include a tiny red Christy-figure) and, it turned out, as master scone-maker as well.

After that break I carry on, energized by more than the caffeine.

Past the Hornby dock, past Burrard Bridge, I’m right up to the Aquatic Centre dock at the eastern edge of Sunset Beach. I could just drop down for a ferry — but, no-no, I can’t do that. I have to walk on. Down there, halfway down Sunset Beach, I can see my absolute-favourite False Creek artwork.

That dark, U-shaped curve on the sand toward the right? That’s it.

I keep walking. I want to visit it close up, and then I’ll double back to the Aquatic Centre dock. (Since it’s the last dock on this north shore of False Creek, I have no choice. Not if I want to stick to my home-by-ferry idea. And I do.)

Pretty wild flowers along the way, also tangles of bushes to which I’m not paying much attention until a woman striding past me points at them and calls out, “Blackberries!” I look, and yes they are. Not yet black, but working on it.

Then, finally I’m up to the sculpture. I can never remember the title, but when I read it again, it makes literal, mathematical sense.

This is 217.5 Arc X 13 — 13 arcs of metal, each curved to 217.5°. It is the work of French artist Bernar Venet, one of his Arc series designed to celebrate “the beauty, balance and malleability of raw steel,” and a legacy installation from the 2009-2011 Vancouver Biennale. (Later, I learn the 2025-2027 Biennale has brought us 241.5 Arc X 2 by the same artist, which is already installed at 884 East Georgia Street in Strathcona. Yes, I will go visit it.)

It’s ferry-time. To get all the way back east to the Village dock, I have to transfer to another boat on Granville Island — which I do.

I chat with the couple next to me, who, it turns out, used to live right opposite where I now live. We agree it’s a terrific neighbourhood. We also agree that it’s an uphill climb from the dock. We grimace, they in memory and I in anticipation. (I do not confess that, just sometimes, I wimp out and take the bus.)

No wimping today. Uphill I walk heading south, and then more uphill as I swing to the east. I pause a moment crossing Quebec Street. Not to catch my breath! How could you suggest such a thing!

I am merely paying my respects to les belles dames. the guardian angels, of Quebec Manor.

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by icelandpenny on 26 July 2026  •  Permalink
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Sea to Sky to Tanabe

21 July 2026 – Mist hangs in the air as our shuttle bus prepares to leave downtown Vancouver for Whistler, some 120 km to the north…

mist still with us, as we drive the aptly-named Sea to Sky section of Highway 99 that will take us there, threading its way between the Pacific Ocean and mountain ranges, beneath a great brooding arc of sky…

and mist still, though beginning to clear, as I approach the building that has called me here: the Audain Art Museum.

More precisely — though the building itself is a joy — it is the current exhibition that has called me here.

Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage celebrates the life and extraordinary eight-decade career of this BC artist, who will turn 100 years old on 16 September 2026. I think of Tanabe in terms of his iconic coastal scenes — for example, Rivers 1/01: Jordan River, 2001. These works breathe mist. Today’s weather is an appropriate homage.

But the exhibit teaches me that the words “Inside Passage” in the title refer to more than these coastal scenes. They also honour Tanabe’s life-long curiosity, his own internal or “inside” passages that have been reflected in his evolving artistic expression.

Pure abstractions early on, during a 1950s stint in New York (here, Interior Arrangement with Red Hills, 1957)…

a brief period of hard-edged abstractions, in the 1960s…

followed by a fascination with the Canadian prairie landscape, as of the early 1970s (here, The Land 10/72).

Curatorial notes refer to the “hard-edged discipline” of this 1972 work, one of the earliest of his prairie pieces, “announcing the shape of an entirely new direction.”

I look around, and admire the prairie era as a whole.

I also admire the building — the way it serves the works and frames the forest beyond. Later I visit the Patkau Architects website, the Vancouver firm that designed this building, and read their intention that its form and character be “deliberately restrained [so as] to form a quiet backdrop for the collection.” Bravo.

I go upstairs to visit the linked exhibit Vistas: From Takao Tanabe’s Travels, where I again think about art galleries and their architecture.

The power of this space!

Yet it does not overwhelm the art (NWT 1/97: Beaulieu River, 1997). I pulse between the art and the space, the space and the art.

I remember my volunteer years at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in the days when the Frank Gehry expansion was still very new, and the joyous reaction of visitors to the building itself — not as informed architectural connoisseurs, purely as people who liked where they were. The little boy, for example, who barrelled into the atrium, spun 360 degrees, gulped and spluttered and just had to blurt it all out to somebody. I was the somebody. “This is so cool!” he cried. “And… and, and… and I haven’t even got to the art yet!”

I do not spin 360, but I do spend some additional vertical time with the building itself — namely, outside and underneath.

To quote that little boy: “This is so cool!” Hard-edged, like Tanabe’s prairie paintings, but at home with the surrounding shaggy forest, just as Gehry’s AGO extension is at home with its own busy neighbourhood (where Gehry’s grandparents lived and very much part of his childhood).

Then I take myself back up to ground level, back onto sidewalks and gangways.

And a good thing, too.

It puts me at a safe distance from which to enjoy this bit of … oh, let’s call it… street theatre.

A black bear ambles out from under the building, and begins a leisurely snuffle of the shrubbery.

I keep a watchful eye out for bears as I walk through Florence Petersen Park en route the bus depot…

but none jump out from behind these old logging stumps.

By the time we are rolling back south, the skies are bright and blue.

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by icelandpenny on 21 July 2026  •  Permalink
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The Hat

17 July 2026 – Small, thoughtful child levels her eyes at me.

“I like your hat.”

“Thank you!”

“I like the bird.”

“Me too! He’s a chickadee.”

“And I like the smiley face.”

“What smiley face?”

She sighs, presented with yet another example of the inability of adults to see what is right in front of their eyes.

I suddenly feel like St-Exupéry’s aviator, being schooled once again by the Little Prince.

“Take off your hat.” (I obey.) “Look.” (I look.)

Still at one with the St-Ex aviator, I implore you: go look at your hat.

You may not have a chickadee. But you just might have a smiley face.

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by icelandpenny on 17 July 2026  •  Permalink
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A-Flutter

3 July 2026 – It’s the motion that first catches my attention.

Not what is moving; just the fact of motion. Then I register what is moving. Lots of little white tags, dancing with the breeze that flutters through the branches of this tree.

Odd how one’s attention moves through stages, refining focus.

Next, I register the tree trunk, with its arc of red & white letters.

Finally, I tip back my head and start a flutter-dance of my own, reading tags.

and…

and…

and…

and…

and…

and…

and also…

Ditto to that!

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by icelandpenny on 3 July 2026  •  Permalink
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Moss, Change, and Canada Day

1 July 2026 – It starts with moss. No. It starts with my desire — fresh from travels that have grounded me (literally) in realities of maritime and eastern Canada — now to ground myself once again in my temperate rainforest home.

I decide to visit the Camosun Bog, once again to spend time “listening to the moss.” Influenced by Gathering Moss (author, Robin Wall Kimmerer), I did this once before, and described it to you in my post of 3 February 2026.

Approaching the Bog, about to walk under that leafy arch and turn that pathway corner…

I know that, this time, it will be different. The February visit was at the height of winter rain; this July visit is full summer.

Now, the bog itself is dry…

and the mosses at the muddy edge …

are citrus green, not emerald.

Beyond, where moss beds mingle with bog plants, patches of moss are fast bleaching…

to the ghostly pallor of mid-summer.

“It is seasonal,” murmurs the moss. “Seasonal cycle, seasonal change.”

All around, all nature demonstrates that truth. As mosses step back, others step forward. Growth tips on the evergreens…

and riots of wildflowers along the paths — yellow…

purple…

and blue.

I sit on a bench, and let my mind drift with the pulse of change.

Drift past seasonal change to the open-ended, larger truth enunciated by Zen Buddhist monk Shunryu Suzuki: “Everything changes.”

Then, perhaps inevitably — this being Canada Day and I so recently immersed in so many components of this magnificent, fractious, generous, squabbling, exasperating, beloved country of mine — I let my mind drift into the possibilities of change in Canada.

Not just the risks. The possibilities.

What if?

Though constitutionally this country is a federation, we have confederation at our core — Canadian Confederation was “the process of federal union in which the British North American colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada [both Upper and Lower] joined together to form the Dominion of Canada.” (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

Our self-image is a mosaic, not (cf that country to the south) a melting pot. We live this image through our evolving concept of multiculturalism, which currently has the support of 66% of Canadians, a support base that even includes people who’d like to see less new immigration (Canadian Diversity Study 2026, the Environics Institute and Global Migration Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University).

What if we were to look for new ways to embrace these multiplicities? Ways that, instead of shredding us into isolated fragments, could strengthen the whole as a supple, breathing organism?

Celebrations around me, as I head for home, both public and back-yard private.

What if?

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by icelandpenny on 1 July 2026  •  Permalink
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Love and the Water

26 June 2026 – I stand on my dear friends’ dock in rural Ontario, soaking up the Ontario/Quebec landscape that has shaped me: rock, water, trees.

The granite of the Canadian Shield; the lakes carved by slow-passing glaciers; the mixed forests woven throughout.

And that canoe.

We are thinking watercraft, and love of watercraft, and especially of canoes. We are about to visit the Canadian Canoe Museum, with its plus-650 examples of canoes, kayaks and paddled watercraft — primarily from coast-to-coast-to-coast Canada, but also from all parts (and eras and cultures) of the world. It is the world’s largest, and most significant, collection of such craft, much of it donated by people who have finally found a worthy forever-home for their own collections.

Really, though, you best understand this worldwide phenomenon through the love and skills of one human being, someone now carrying on that tradition. For example, Brian Cook, who is taking a few weeks from his Cook Craft home base in Dwight, Ontario, to serve as the June 2026 Builder in Residence at the museum.

In the workshop, he demonstrates the stages of the work involved, talking with visitors, sharing the lore with them, responding to their own knowledge and passion and interest.

I gesture to this splendid green canoe, on display against the wall, and ask if it is part of the Museum’s collection.

He is horrified. “No! It’s mine! I built it, I use it, it is part of my life, some day they’ll bury it with me.”

Brian was mentored in these skills by an older master of canoe-building, Jack Hurley. I tell him about the high school students in Gananoque who, with mentorship, have now built a St. Lawrence skiff. He quickens with interest, and I promise him photos.

Almost at the end of our trip up the St. Lawrence River, the Canadian Empress stopped in this community, which sits at the heart of the Thousand Islands and is just east of Kingston where the waters of Lake Ontario flow into the mighty river. It is, appropriately, home to the Thousand Islands Boat Museum. Unlike the Canadian Canoe Museum, with its world-wide scope (though Canadian emphasis), this museum is devoted entirely to the watercraft of this one specific region within the St. Lawrence River.

Even before opening their doors, the museum launched its youth boat-building program, part of the museum’s focus on reconnecting local kids with their own river.

The first project? A faithful reproduction of the iconic St. Lawrence skiff — the double-ended work and pleasure boat essential to island farmers’ lives from the 19th century until power boats took over in the 1930s or so.

More than 100 high school students took part. This is what they built.

When the little museum opened its doors in 2014, Skiffy was launched, at the heart of the collection.

Obvious differences between these two museums, only 206 km. apart: One, on the shores of Little Lake just outside Peterborough, Ontario, founded in 1997 and now displaying its extensive collection both in the museum and through the glass walls of the storage area…

and one on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, which opened its doors in 2014, and houses a much more modest collection.

They are united, however, in what matters: their love for this living heritage, and their determination to preserve and enhance all that it encompasses.

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by icelandpenny on 26 June 2026  •  Permalink
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Locked, Sheltered & Delivered

21 June 2026 – I could go silly with factoids in this post, so I am busy slapping myself down. Even so, I encourage you to click the links and go silly on your own time.

The “it” in question is the St. Lawrence Seaway in general, the Montreal-Lake Ontario stretch of it in particular, and its locks system in very particular. I am awe-struck by all of it. This Seaway still stands as one of the greatest, the most challenging, engineering feats of all time.

The feat? Four years of mid-20th c. construction that re-contoured the 306 km. stretch of the river between Montreal and Lake Ontario, adding a new lake, 7 locks and a major power dam in the process, and engaging 22,000 workers who among other things moved 210 million cubic yards of rock & gravel and poured more than 6 million cubic yards of concrete.

On top of all that, it was a bilateral (Canada/USA) project. First mooted by a US politician in the late 19th century, the Canadian government took up the idea in the 20th c., only to be met with stonewalling on the American side. Post-World War II, however, when giant American mining companies saw depleted high-grade ore reserves in the USA but large high-grade reserves in their Canadian operations, that was when — gee, what a surprise — the US government came on-side.

We learn some of this along the way. Mostly, I just want to gawk, in awe and respect, at the complexity of applying the basic principles that drive any lock system. You want to move a vessel from one water level to another? Basically, you put it in an elevator and send it one way or the other: seal it up nice & tight in a lock at the entry-water level; add or subtract water as necessary to reach the desired exit level; open the exit gate; and away it goes.

In a ship, in a lock big enough to accommodate freighters twice as long and half as wide as a football field (up to 225.5 m/740 ft in length and 23.8 m/78 ft at the beam)… then that simple concept gets pretty impressive.

And necessary. Canadian Empress is a small ship, out there for pleasure, but these ocean-going freighters are transporting cargo to/from the heart of North America. They need fast (average 45 min./lock), dependable conveyance through a water-level difference of 75 metres (246 ft) over the 306 km (189 mile) stretch between Montreal and Lake Ontario. The total rise, from sea level on up to Lake Superior (reached by additional locks), is the equivalent of a 60-storey building.

(Aren’t you glad I haven’t gone silly with factoids?)

We travel all 7 locks (5 Canadian, 2 American). The second lock, Côte Sainte-Catherine, illustrates the process. We position ourselves, and await the green lights (and open entry gate) that tell us to proceed…

and since we are travelling west and will need to rise, lock by lock, to the Lake Ontario level, water now sluices into the lock…

with a deckhand constantly manipulating the lines to keep the ship taut and positioned.

Once we’ve reached the level of the waters beyond, they open the exit gate…

and out we go.

Travelling this great waterway, we meet — of course — freighters. Such as the Taiga Desgagnes…

just west of the Côte Sainte-Catherine lock, busy loading cargo. Sharp-eyed fellow passengers swear that’s a fire engine being hauled aboard, but I can’t verify the claim.

We meet other freighters, including one depressingly named Barnacle, and also the CSL Welland, surely the jauntiest of the bunch. As she awaits her turn for the Snell lock (one of the two American locks)…

we have time to admire her sporty mural.

We meet other vessels as well, some very small and each with its own purpose — everything from personal small boats out for a bit of fishing (in the South Canal near Montreal)…

to working vessels, this one marked “Incendie”, fire patrol…

and apparently doing some kind of research involving that red ring. Perhaps studying currents?

And we meet bridges. Here, the Samuel-de-Champlain Bridge, a cable-stayed structure that is as elegant above…

as underneath.

We also, in the broad placid waters of Lake St. Lawrence, meet a graveyard.

Literally, to some extent, as well as figuratively.

Lake St. Lawrence is human-made, part of the massive re-contouring of the river that involved creating a huge reservoir for the new Saunders Power Dam near Cornwall, Ontario. Underneath this lake, this reservoir, lie the Sunken Villages of the St. Lawrence — 12 Canadian communities entirely flooded (8) or partially destroyed/relocated (4) in order to create that reservoir. Yes, there was relocation assistance, but nothing financial can erase the emotional price.

Did you notice the lowering sky, in all but one of those photos? We experience squally, blustery weather all along — even that sunshine behind CSL Welland soon disappears.

And so, when we passengers were expecting to keep sailing on upriver toward that evening’s destination, Cornwall, we are instead told we will not carry on through the anticipated storm. We will instead take shelter.

Take shelter? Just like that, find a convenient berth for a vessel our size?

Well, as a matter of fact… yes.

We turn into Coteau Landing (just east of St-Zotique). Where a suitable berth is permanently available.

This is just one of a number of guaranteed bolt-holes up and down the river, ready to receive the Canadian Empress whenever she happens to need one.

The threatened huge storm never did hit — though as you can see, trees are still being whipped about by the wind.

After a comfortable night of shelter (including time to stroll through the little community), we leave at 5 a.m. and get ourselves back on schedule.

Near Iroquois, we pass through the last of the 7 locks, this one as large as the others but slightly different in one respect. The difference earns it the name of a “drive-through” lock. Here, water is not sluiced in or out from points low by the gates. Instead, once the vessel is in position, the forward lock gate is very slightly opened, allowing that level of water to start infiltrating the lock and eventually bring its waters to the desired exit level.

And so, as we exit the Iroquois lock…

we have finally been delivered to the level of Lake Ontario (which lies just ahead of us, at Kingston).

Meanwhile, we carve our way through the myriad delights of the Thousand Islands that dot these international waters between Brockville and Kingston.

For once, marketing understates the case: in fact, or so they say, there are 1,864 islands. (And who are we to argue?)

I’m now happy to lean back, as sunshine and warmth finally make their appearance, and enjoy what lies before me: the final 80 km of an extraordinary voyage.

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by icelandpenny on 22 June 2026  •  Permalink
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Life With the Empress

18 June 2026 – Isn’t she a charmer?

Built well into the 20th c. but designed in Victorian “classic Canadian riverboat” tradition, The Canadian Empress takes 56 passengers and offers beautifully-scaled (and informative) trips along both the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, with frequent stops for exploration ashore.

We board late afternoon, are taken for an early-evening cruise to view Montmorency Falls (taller than Niagara), and spend the night at anchor in the Louise Basin, before…

at 6:30 am, starting our journey. We pass through the 19th-c. locks that protect anchored craft from the river’s 6-metre tidal variations; we take one last look at the city, with the Château Frontenac en haut and three red-&-white Coast Guard vessels en bas…

and we settle in for life on the river, its waters already a-glitter with early morning sunshine.

The river is still broad but, even so, we can always see both shores, and the life that populates them. Sometimes industrial; sometimes, as here approaching Champlain, a scattering of homes.

First stop: Trois-Rivières — population now some 150,000 and both larger and more diversified than when I visited it decades back, to interview an innovative high-school principal for a CBC documentary I was preparing.

I mention “diversified” because for more than 100 years (late 1890s – 2000), this small city was at the heart of the Canadian pulp and paper industry. Drawing on lumber from the boreal forests of the region & the waters of the St-Maurice River, it helped make Canada the world’s largest newsprint exporter by 1913 and the world’s largest producer by 1926. Now a by-gone era, for multiple reasons — but that history is honoured, explained, demonstrated in Musée Boréalis, created within and around the footprint of the old CIP mill, in its day the world’s largest.

I marvel at the old machinery (here, in the Filtration Plant)…

in ignorance but with fascination and respect.

Also with tattered and probably inaccurate memories of a visit to a pulp & paper mill in my small childhood, taken on a personal field trip by my engineer father whose company sold machinery to these mills. I remember whoever-it-was detailed to show me around keeping a very firm grip on my overalls as I peered — amidst all the noise & heat & odours — into a swirling vat of pulp. Wouldn’t do to lose the kid overboard! That is not a joke. As they explained at the museum, occasionally a worker did fall in (safety standards being laughable, in the day), and there was no saving him.

But! But! We don’t just marvel and listen and learn, we get to make our very own little squares of paper! The lively young guide gives us the same cheerful instructions she offers adults & kiddies alike. Soon we are dunking our frames in the pulp, lifting them, finger-wiping a margin, blotting (both sides), covering & ironing (both sides)… and then, squealing like kiddies, we flick-flick-flick our frames…

and our little rectangles of paper drop onto the mat. You betcha I’m taking it home with me.

Dinner aboard and then — bless these long June evenings — still time, light and warmth for those so inclined to go wander the town on their own.

Isn’t non-plane travel the best? No security rigamaroles, just a reminder to be back onboard by X hour, and meanwhile, go amuse yourself. So I do.

Up on the three-tier Esplande de Trois-Rivières, I — in the company of assorted Tri-fluviens (and their dogs) — stroll and admire the view. This freighter, for example (bound for Iceland & Greenland, our captain tells us), bathed in the golden glow of early evening.

I turn slightly inland into the old city, walk a stretch of Rue des Ursulines, parallel to the waterfront…

looking east toward both Parc des Ursulines and Cimetière des Ursulines. I don’t go that far; I amble a few more residential streets and return to the Empress.

It’s only the next morning — this morning — that I remember the captain also said something-or-other about “squalls” to come.

I admire Île des Barques, off Ste-Anne-de-Sorel, through rain-bright steps under a rain-wet canopy.

Later today: Montreal. My home town.

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Balancing Act

16 June 2026 – And so, at 6:15 a.m. as promised, I’m off VIA Rail in Ste-Foy, then onto the shuttle bus, and…

across the St. Lawrence River into Quebec City.

I decide a walk will do more for my addled head than extra coffee. Out I go, up to the surviving section (4.6 km) of stone ramparts that, as of 1608, were being built to encircle and protect Nouvelle France.

The Kent Gate is still imposing, still a witness of Then, living with us in the Now.

I walk on along to Porte Saint-Jean, look back at the juxtaposition of Then and Now:

young bums on ancient stones, intercut by ancient canon, their owners busy on 21st-c smart phones.

I begin to wonder a bit about the inherent balancing act for old cities. How do you honour and protect that heritage, without freezing into a museum that denies modern life?

I can’t answer the question, but I do see more examples of this city’s balancing act all around me. A new building sliced in between old ones, for example, here in Place D’Youville, just outside the ramparts…

and, also in Place D’Youville, young-culture skateboarders twirling past one of the city’s abundance of old-culture statuary (here, Les Muses).

All this history, all this European ambience. Quebec City is a magnet for tourists.

Another balancing act.

On near-by Rue Ste-Anne (where tourist me happens to be staying), I look into an alcove and see some local push-back:

Indeed. How does a tourist-magnet city welcome and please tourists, without being overrun and turned into a cartoon? I head downhill on Rue Saint-Jean — a tourist thoroughfare — and see something of the current mix. It’s eclectic and strongly patriotic, both Québécois and pan-Canadian.

High on the wall, half-way up the block beyond the Rue Sainte-Angèle sign in the foreground, you’ll see the Cows logo…

a PEI brand, offering terrific ice-cream along with a range of whimsical cow-image clothing & accessories.

Right across the street…

less nutritious, and surely just as popular, the lure of Mary’s Popcorn.

Cheerful kitsch here at my elbow, with its own patriotic statements…

from the red “not-for-sale” Canadian cap, to the mock Quebec licence plate, with its chosen example of distinctive Quebec swear words.

(Flashback: when I joined the fledgling Oxfam-Québec as Director of Projects, the rest of the team, all francophone, promptly taught me how to swear “comme une bonne Québécoise.” And I still can.)

Yet more patriotism, a classy clothing shop with its proud boast in large letters on the window.

Yay for that, but it’s a bit confusing, no? A Canadian enterprise that chooses to name itself San Francisco?

At the next intersection, an old building whose lettering and style live up to the elegance of the building itself…

plus, across Saint-Jean in a second-storey balcony window…

a curious moose, keeping track of us all.

Enough musing. I’m hungry.

I park myself at a Bistro Hortus patio table and listen to the young, stylish (and stylishly tattoo’ed) servers switch smoothly from French to English as the occasion requires.

My choice is the “Salade biologique au chèvre des neiges” (goat cheese). I speak French with the server, and she offers me the same polished charm she offers everyone else. She does break composure, however, wrinkling her brow slightly when I ask her to bring back the menu for a moment — until I explain I want to take a picture of the salad description “comme une bonne p’tite touriste.” This causes her to burst into genuine laughter, and after that we have an amused good time together.

Fortified with salad plus café au lait, I walk on and discover Artisans Canada. Since I’m already wearing a Tilley hat with a little wooden chickadee pin on it and a MEC backpack and my Newfoundland earrings (thank you again, DJ), I fit right in. I make a few purchases, and I now suggest that — should quality Canadiana interest you — you might have a look for yourself.

Looping ’round to head back uphill to my vielle-ville hotel, I cut through the very modern plaza skirting the slightly old City Hall (1890s), which sits on the site of the very old Jesuit college (1730s). Trees, shrubbery, spring blossoms, and seating from which to admire it all.

Plus fountains of water that shoot into the air at regular intervals…

and have these two little girls in fits of laughter.

Judging by speech patterns and body language, these are local people relaxing in a local park, even as tourist season rumbles into high gear.

It’s a balancing act.

7 Comments
by icelandpenny on 16 June 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Travel, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 16 June 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/06/16/balancing-act/

Rouli Roulant…

14 June 2026 – How better to title a blog post being written as I roll toward the St. Lawrence River, than with words from a paddling song of early voyageurs?

And I am rolling along, on board VIA Rail. Just the latest phase of several days of travel, all on the surface, and running the gamut from ferry to bus to train.

Ferry!

The MV Madeleine II at dock in Souris, PEI, after our morning crossing from Cap-aux-Meules, Magdalen Islands. She’s 124 m. long, 6 decks high, can carry 750 passengers and 200 vehicles per trip, which in a year totals some 100,00 people and 41,000 vehicles.

I have time to learn this, also time to admire the red beaches besides the terminal…

because I have a four-hour wait before my local-route bus ride on up to the capital of PEI, Charlottetown.

Bus!

It all goes well. It is the start of my pleasure in the continuing presence of inter-community busses here in the Maritimes, something we used to enjoy elsewhere in Canada but no longer do.

Sunshine throughout the stay on the Magdalens, and now — gusty, drizzly rain.

I brave it for a morning walk to Victoria Park, then — hat and hood pulled tight around my head — turn back into town. My reward is this dramatic mural en route.

At 1 pm my next bus takes off, one that (via a connection) takes me off-island to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with a little slice of New Brunswick thrown into the mix.

Until 1997, the only way off-island was to fly or take a ferry. That year, a new option opened up. Thanks to the new Confederation Bridge, vehicles could now drive a 12.9 km. link across the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait between the island and New Brunswick.

We’re on the bridge. It is very foggy.

But eventually there it is: the New Brunswick shore.

We’re soon in Nova Scotia and, late afternoon, I drop off in Dartmouth, just short of the final stop, neighbouring Halifax. Next morning, I’m in Halifax, at the waterfront train station

Rail!

Not quite yet, I’ve 20 minutes to kill, so I walk a bit of the Halifax Harbour front.

It’s an important harbour, and I’ll let the signage concisely tell you why.

(Apologies if all this data causes you to resonate with the very cross little boy slapping down a very large book on the library Returns desk and complaining: “This book tells me a great deal more about penguins than I want to know!” On the other hand, I am not looking over your shoulder, so let your eyes skitter on down the page, if you wish.)

Still foggy, which somehow seems exactly the sort of weather we should be having…

… though perhaps lifting slightly. I can now, faintly, make out the lighthouse on the little island directly ahead of us.

Time to catch my train. It runs a route now named The Atlantic, but which began in 1904 as the Ocean line. That date, I later learn, makes this the longest continuous-service passenger service in North America.

I’ll be going almost all the way…

getting off in Ste-Foy for the short connecting ride to Quebec City.

Did you notice that use of the present progressive tense? (“I’ll be going…”) Yes, my friends, as promised above, I am still on board, swaying gently with the train’s motion as I type this post in the WiFi service car.

We have just pulled out of Moncton (consult your map, above)…

and I think I’ll say good-bye. I want to spend my time falling into the passing landscape.

Next post, probably, from Quebec City.

À bientôt.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 14 June 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in City, Nature, photography, street art, Travel
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Posted by icelandpenny on 14 June 2026

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