Right ‘Round the Elephant’s Head

26 April 2026 – Not a real elephant. But play along with me on this, will you? Imagine the side view of an elephant’s head — one with an unusually large eye and an unfortunately short and lumpy trunk.

Now look at this map of Stanley Park.

I hope you’re laughing.

It’s a bright, mild, breezy day, and I am about to walk the Seawall right ’round the elephant’s head, starting at the black-starred “0 KM” marker at the base of his thick neck, down there to the right of Lost Lagoon.

Signs remind us to play nicely with the other children.

Halfway along the underside of that lumpy trunk, I take a picture of the seabed exposed by low tide…

and hear a puzzled little voice behind me ask, “Daddy, where’s the water?” Daddy meets the challenge: with child-appropriate vocabulary and to child-appropriate length, he explains the concept of tides. “Oh!” she cries, very pleased. We all move on.

I pass HMCS Discovery, out there on the Deadman’s Island military reserve, admiring both its own dignity and, to the left, the silhouette of the Convention Centre roof-top “sails.”

Soon after, I notice something else — first a diver-below warning flag out in the water, and then the diver herself at water’s edge, working with a colleague to hand her oxygen tank up to waiting hands above.

I ask; she explains: routine monitoring of the kelp beds. She grins at my next question. “Yes,” she says, “they look healthy.”

A float plane flies still-low over the water, snarling its way into the sky.

Later, in the photo, I see that bird upper left, already soaring high. Silently.

Soon I’m at Brockton Point, the tip of the elephant’s stubby trunk. Across Burrard Inlet, gleaming piles of yellow sulphur in the Port’s North Vancouver terminals…

and at my feet a plaque reminding me that while the sulphur (from Alberta) is the visually dramatic export, those terminals handle so much more — including millions of tons of potash (Saskatchewan), coal (BC), petroleum products and concentrates, all brought here for export to six continents.

I’m now walking the upper side of the trunk, all along Burrard Inlet. I pause a moment, mesmerized for once not by natural phenomena but by a cultural phenomenon of our times. I watch a couple of intense young podcasters as they set up their next production.

Red Shirt is rehearsing her lines, fists clenched for emphasis; Black Shirt is twiddling and re-twiddling her hair. A moment later they are posed before the camera, about to emote, their lips carefully stretched far enough to approximate smiles but not far enough to (gasp) cause any wrinkles.

As I move on, sternly reminding myself not to judge, I overhear a woman’s remark to her male companion as they walk the other way. She is, or is not, passing judgment. You decide. “I really admire your ambition and your determination, but sometimes… sometimes it’s OK to slow down.” I don’t hear his reply.

I see Lumberman’s Arch to my left, don’t veer inland to revisit it. Soon after, I stop for a modest little sundial, currently benefiting from all the sun it needs to do its job.

I have to wait my turn: a guy in a Blue Jays cap is checking the sundial against his watch. “It’s an hour out,” he announces. Then he wags a finger to withdraw that remark, and we both laugh. “Yeah,” I say. “It’s on nature’s time, not on daylight-saving.” He walks on, I take a photo and, since there’s no way to avoid shadows, I decide to make them a feature.

I am being kinder to this sundial than is the North American Sundial Society, which puts technical expertise behind its conclusion that this “once very beautiful” sundial is now in “poor condition.”

As I work my way toward the top of the elephant’s head, I get frequent glimpses of Lion’s Gate Bridge, each one a little closer.

And, then, I’m right under it.

So much ocean, out there on my right-hand side. It’s easy to forget there is also so much forest on my left-hand side.

At 400 hectares (about 1,000 acres), Stanley Park is some 20% larger than Central Park in NYC.

I’m now past Prospect Point, starting down the back side of the elephant’s head along English Bay. Mostly shade, and breezy. Some dramatic hits of sunshine slicing through…

but mostly, visuals be damned! It’s just a chilly reminder of the difference sunshine vs shade makes to ambient temperature.

I pass Siwash Rock, an ancient sea stack and an important cultural site for the Coast Salish peoples, noticing both the rock and the line of freighters behind it, out there in the Port Authority’s parking lot.

It’s only as I pass beside the rock that I notice that the Douglas fir on top appears dead — and it’s only back home, later, I learn that the tree has already been replaced several times in the past dozen years or so, a victim to storms.

Third Beach! I’m mid-way down the back of the elephant’s head.

A short off-ramp leads to some food stalls, already open for business. It’s a popular refueling point for walkers & cyclists, and I join them. A bit later, happy and re-energized, I drop back down to the Seawall, with a backward, grateful glance up to those red umbrellas and all that they offer.

Just to add to my pleasure: a Great Blue Heron, close to shore.

Everyone stops to admire. Even the chatter-boxes fall silent. One man mouths “Beautiful!” at me and we nod at each other.

Somewhere between Third and Second beaches, I share a bench with the spirit of (so says the plaque) one Henri Félix Bonay. I count 15 freighters, out there in the parking lot.

It’s an impressive number, but not as impressive as the number attached to M. Bonay. According to dates on the plaque, he lived to 103.

Curve upon curve in the Seawall, vista upon vista. I am now beyond Second Beach, with its open-air swimming pool, well down the English Bay side of the elephant’s thick neck. I look back, this time following my ears not my feet.

Salsa music! Somewhere out there, on one of those freighters, it’s party time. Or perhaps it’s chore time, but with music to make the work more agreeable.

I see city streets above me. I’m about to leave Stanley Park for the ribbon of English Bay Beach Park…

its sands on view to the right of this map.

Good-bye, elephant.

I cross over to Morton Park, spend a few moments with the lads of A-Maze-ing Laughter...

and make my way home.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 26 April 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 26 April 2026

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Walking the Dogleg

17 April 2026 – “Dogleg” is not its name. It will not answer to Dogleg. It is the Arbutus Greenway — the 9-ish km asphalt pathway that lies on old railway land between the Fraser River and False Creek, and runs alongside Arbutus Street most of the way.

I will be walking northward and I join it well north, at West 16th (just opposite the word “transportation” on that sign), so after a short straight stretch on north I’ll follow it around the curve to the east. I’ll walk the dogleg, in other words.

Major intersections with cross-streets are well signposted and have cheerful amenities. Here at 16th…

they include bright seating, a mural on the utility box and (on the right) a metal free-library box that, at the moment, offers both Fall On Your Knees, the 1996 classic by Ann-Marie MacDonald and The Intelligence of Dogs by Stanley Coren. Four generations of Cape Breton family drama vs canine IQ, take your pick.

My pick is to start walking, and I do — though I stop again almost immediately, transfixed by this bold, emphatic, but not-quite-thought-through call for civic good behaviour.

Oh, that pesky “G”!

Several blocks on, I’m approaching both 11th Avenue and, beyond that, the mammoth subway construction project on Broadway (aka 9th Ave) that will end here at Arbutus.

Worlds collide. Construction and, I assume, a detour lie ahead of me, but meanwhile, here on my right-hand side: that white building, offering yet more public-storage space; the orange sign, advertising a personal training studio; and, see the cream building in front of that line of grey townhouses?

I detour off-piste to check it out. Its wonderful art-deco details are testimony to its construction 1932-34, and a reminder that only government was building anything in those depression years. This is the Bessborough Armoury, home to the 15th Field Artillery Regiment. (They are recruiting, BTW. Just thought I’d point that out.)

Back on-piste, but not for long. Of course we can’t walk straight through the Broadway Subway Project!

I exit one block early, and stand at the corner of 11th & Arbutus Street, pondering my next steps. At least I get to choose! See the little bulldog?

He is now being towed quite firmly north on Arbutus. A moment earlier, I overheard their street-corner contest of wills. Dog: “Whine-whine-whine-whine” [and tug-tug-tug on the leash]. Owner: “No, we are not visiting the pet store today. Come along.” [Sharp snap on the leash.] Sure enough, there is a pet store, immediately south of the intersection.

Unlike the dog, I have no need to make my case. I do not need to justify crossing Arbutus to walk one block farther west on 11th. It looks green over there, and inviting, and unknown. I follow my whim.

I bet you agree it was a whim worth following. Look how pretty it is, viewed from Yew, just one street over. Equally comfy with the next whim to cross my mind, I now turn north on Yew.

I walk on up to Broadway. I cross Broadway (safely beyond the construction project). And, still following Yew…

I discover I have wandered myself onto the official Greenway detour route.

Soon the detour ends. I am back on the Greenway and, like this walker ahead of me, almost at the dogleg curve.

‘Round the curve, and we have gardens and greenery on all sides. Here to the north, almost at Maple Street, the Kitsilano Community Garden.

Also north side, and immediately across Maple, this bulletin board (I am most taken with the encouragement to grow my own urban wheat and mill my own flour)…

which is smack against the boundary fence for Urban Farmer, an organization that has been encouraging urbanites to grow/compost/recycle for almost fifty years. Even their garden gates are a joy, constructed from rusty old rebar and implements…

and chock-full of jokes, when you get close enough.

This squirrel, for example.

I love his ingeniously bushy tail — but, above all, I love the fact that he is clutching a nut.

Broad asphalt pathway, bordered on the right by a verge of ragged grass and beyond that, a succession of garden allotments. Peering down the middle of all these allotments is a delight. The cityscape entirely falls away.

Some have no signage, some an individual name, and some — like this one — self-identify at the broader community level.

I take this photo, amused to see that the Canadian Pacific Ltd. sign behind it has been selectively painted out. Through the white paint, you can still read old black letters: private property, no trespassing.

Ohhhh, sigh. I don’t know the details, I just know they are profuse. This whole Greenway lies on old CPR railway land, purchased from CPR by the City in 2016 and subject to lengthy, tangled legal disputes both before & since. Read all about it here, in a space wonderfully titled Participedia. The analysis argues that this particular “rails to trails” project is in fact de-railed, with ambitious City plans stalled and nothing achieved but all this placeholder asphalt. Meanwhile, it claims — citing Cypress Community Garden as an example — individuals and community groups enjoy the freedom this limbo status offers them, to do their own gardening projects. Not official, not recognized, but not exactly officially unrecognized, either.

Or so I gather.

All I know for sure is that it’s messy. Still, for individuals walking/biking/rolling on through, it is also very enjoyable, albeit far from what Civic planners want to offer us.

Evidence of human love, devotion and sheer joy on all sides. Three stones carefully arranged within a concrete barrier, one of them as close as red sequins can come to a Fabergé Easter egg…

and a veritable Bee Multiplex one allotment on down. Overwinter here, please! You are safe!

And — right next to a stump covered in glorious tiny fungi, needing no human help at all — something else that needs no human help at all.

One dandelion, who has found his own perfect spring residence.

I’m well around the bend by now, almost at the end, almost at the moment when I must rejoin the city in all its grit and grime. But first, for encouragement, this message.

I don’t know the origin of this paint job, or the intended meaning of the slogan. I’m happy to take it as a reminder to enjoy wherever my feet take me.

A necessary reminder, here at 7th & Granville!

Yup, grit and grime.

But also, look, some murals to enjoy, tucked away in the alcove beneath that bridge on-ramp.

There’s more to enjoy, hoofing on up Granville: another mural, and more gardens.

The mural, Force of Nature, is by Phil Grey, part of the 2021 Vancouver Mural Festival. Since the VMF is no more, how fitting that the mural rises over a garden that, one day, will also be no more.

Signage acknowledges — proudly — that this is a temporary garden.

It is one example of such gardens throughout the city. They are organized by Community Garden Builders, a local social enterprise that works with landowners and community groups to create temporary gardens and dog parks on spaces awaiting redevelopment.

Just like all those gardens along the Arbutus Greenway!

The art of the temporary.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 17 April 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 17 April 2026

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Look Low, Look High

6 April 2026 – And also look straight ahead.

I’m in Rocky Point Park in Port Moody, headed for the Shoreline Trail that curves around the far eastern end of Burrard Inlet. It’s in forest — but right on the edge of the forest, with constant water views. For example, the mud flats I’ve just shown you — all the more dramatic with the one-two punch of low tide and bright sunshine.

All along the way, ribbons of water snake through the mud, every instant their positions that tiny bit different, true to nature’s rhythms.

The pedestrian trail, separate from the biking trail, is gravel, liberally supplied with benches, and sometimes, as here, quite broad.

But sometimes not broad — as here, with a liberal supply of tree roots.

When I’m not watching where I put my feet — an important part of “look low” — I’m giddy-stunned by the interplay of colour and texture. All around me, every level. This stump, for example, itself firm and crisply defined…

but in a context of other colours, other textures.

Reds so red!

Greens so green!

And textures smack up against each other, to punch colour & energy that much higher.

Signs of early spring.

My first Skunk Cabbage of the year…

and, up in those trees, not only nests that show this is indeed a Great Blue Heron Nesting Colony…

but adult heron heads poking out of almost every nest, and this heron (to right of the left-hand nest) perched on a branch.

I don’t know whose duties are what, up there in the nests. Like other trail-walkers, I’m content just to watch for a while, and admire.

Thanks to low tide, it’s an easy walk out to the lumber mill remnants still to be seen in Old Mill Site Park.

I look out-across to the big view, but I also look down-under a decaying concrete ledge, itself now covered in moss and colonizing plants…

to see some of the industrial decay: rotting supports, shards of brick and, but of course, yer basic bit of 21st-c. graffiti.

I’m not quite at Trail’s end, not quite all the way to Old Orchard Park, but this is always the spot I feel marks my personal trail’s end. (And, hey, it’s my walk, right?) So I turn.

One last pause to admire the snake dance of mud & water…

one last pause to admire dappled shadows thrown on trees & trail…

and I’m back in Port Moody.

Where a random walk down Clarke Street leads me first past — and then very much into — Andes Latin Foods. Run by a family from Venezuela, the bodega offers foodstuffs from all the Andean countries, both staples to take away, and foods to eat then and there from the menu.

I settle into place.

The café con leche is trans-Andean, but the alfajor is definitely the Peruvian version.

Bliss!

3 Comments
by icelandpenny on 6 April 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 6 April 2026

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Urban Giraffes

3 April 2026 – The urban giraffes raise their heads, a-top those long orange necks…

and watch the weather roll in.

1 Comment
by icelandpenny on 3 April 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 3 April 2026

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But Wait! There’s More!

31 March 2026 – Good grief, I sound like an infomercial. But what’s a girl to do? There I was, after posting Old & New, minding my own business, waiting for a #99 at Ontario & Broadway.

Just across the corner, I see this:

What?? I investigate.

A whole new, and agreeably perplexing, category for Old & New.

Very old stop sign, its official cap long gone, plus, up there on top, a very new burst of mystery greenery.

Nothing special about either the stop sign or the greenery, except the combination of the two.

What knocked the official top-of-sign off the sign? What then deposited enough city grit & grime in the sign pole to form a growing medium? How long did it take? What then (wind, bird, Act of God) deposited mystery seeds — plink!!! — so precisely into that growing medium? When did that happen?

We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter.

We can just take it as it comes. A mystery gift from the city, to us.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 31 March 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 31 March 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/03/31/but-wait-theres-more/

Old & New

30 March 2026 – It’s everywhere.

Old East Van building, new blossoms…

Old Granville bridge, new leaves…

Old market barrel, new plantings…

Old Tassel Fern, brand-new baby fronds.

It’s spring!

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 30 March 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 30 March 2026

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Deconstruction…

27 March 2026 – You’ve already met a few of my obsessions — e.g. winter moss, H-frame hydro poles, crows, even (briefly, as a new Vancouverite) umbrella stands. Here is one more. I tend to deconstruct construction sites.

It does make me laugh.

Not just the pun. Especially the thought that, all these decades later, I arguably have something in common with Jacques Derrida et al. — those hyper-intellectuals who created such a storm in the 1960s/70s world of philosophical, literary and political analysis. At the time, it made my head ache, and their scholarly version of it still does.

But, hear me out. I can make a case for claiming that when I see a construction site, my instinctive reaction satisfies the basic definition of “deconstruction.”

May I quote the Cambridge Dictionary? Thank you. To deconstruct is to “break something down into its separate parts in order to understand its meaning, especially when this is different from how it was previously understood.”

My usual reaction is not to see construction sites as collections of machinery doing important things, or as the rampant capitalist destruction of the environment, or as a personal inconvenience — three examples of ways they are commonly understood.

Without conscious intent, I slide into seeing them differently. When I look at them, they deconstruct into patterns of colours and shapes and the giddy interactions that set those patterns dancing.

For example, this bike lane enhancement project rolling out along East 1st Avenue, just west of Quebec Street:

I stand at the barrier and bounce around with all those shapes! all those colours!

Horizontal & vertical & up close & far away & bright orange & screaming yellow & deep blue & rectangles & triangles & right angles & curves… Even that lovely block of negative-space blue sky, ‘way down there to the west.

Or, half a block to the east, this sewer repair project right at East 1st and Quebec.

I align my camera with a gap in the fence and (not literally) fall into one corner of the groundwork.

Triangular cone & vertical pole & mesh fence & rectangular slabs & tubes & black & orange & yellow & some gritty pavement while we’re at it.

Later I’m in the alley between Quebec and Main streets, immediately south of the construction that will one day — late 2027, if all goes reasonably well — turn into the Mount Pleasant Station for the extension to the Millennium Subway Line, now boring its tortuous way westward to Arbutus.

I take a long shot, and — I give you fair warning — I commit the basic, bonehead camera-idiot error. Parallax!

Parallax to the max, and I don’t care. I didn’t know how to prevent it, and I quite enjoy the effect: an impressionistic if not literal truth, a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party moment, with the buildings on the right leaning forward to peer into the construction site on the left, and the crane apparently about to whack that building on its head and teach it to behave itself.

Still, if you can stop laughing at my technical blunders, I invite you to enjoy all those shapes, all those textures, all the colours. The whole dance, and the energy of that dance.

I look up, to the left.

Intersections, textures, colours, shapes. More negative-space sky.

I look up, to the right.

Ohhh, there’s a whole corps de ballet dancing around that hydro pole.

Ground level again. Phew.

The calm authority of a single vertical pole…

parked, and it doesn’t care, right next to a very bad-tempered no-parking sign on the fence.

I orient to the pole, give my head a little shake, feel my feet firm on the ground, and rein in my deconstructionist fantasies. Adieu, l’analyse derridiste… Then, staggering only slightly, I leave the alley.

1 Comment
by icelandpenny on 27 March 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 27 March 2026

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Stop & Go

19 March 2026 – I’m not wearing my welly boots*, am I, so I can’t jump in the puddles.

But I can still play with them.

STOP!

says the first puddle.

GO!

says the second puddle.

STOP!

says the third puddle.

I go anyway, on home.

*****

* Welly Boots. Invented by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington — or, more precisely, by his shoemaker, when asked to modify the Hessian boot of the day and turn it into something still smart, but more hard-wearing. Patriotic young bloods adopted the boot, and it’s been with us ever since — aka the gum boot, a nod to the “gum” from rubber trees originally used in the waterproof version, and, more prosaically, the plain old rainboot.

“Welly boots” entered my slang via The Great Northern Welly Boots Show, a smash hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of 1972, co-written and performed by Billy (now Sir William) Connolly. I’d love to tell you I saw it there and then, but alas, no. I saw it a bit later on, when it was busy being an equally smash hit at the Young Vic in London.

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 19 March 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 19 March 2026

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Sun X 2

15 March 2026 – Needles of rain and 5C as I start this post, but we’ve just had two consecutive days of sunshine. The first unexpected, the second predicted, and both a reason to go walk by the water.

The First, Unexpected

Certain the gloom will persist or worsen, we linger over a long café lunch. Suddenly the sky is bright, so we abandon indoors and set off for Kitsilano Beach. Our route takes us north on Cypress Street — where of course I notice winter moss.

By now, it’s not the only act in town. Plum blossoms are out everywhere you look, including right here.

We could stick with Cypress and get to the water the obvious way, but we don’t.

This alley…

offers one bright garage door, plus a less-obvious way to reach the water, from another angle.

Once there, a pole-top gull — undoubtedly in the pay of the tourist board — welcomes us to English Bay and a long view of all those freighters waiting their turn to carry on down Burrard Inlet to the Port of Vancouver.

Smooth sand in front of us, just waiting for volleyball season, but over there, a bit to the east, a great spill of rocks.

They guard the entrance to False Creek, which in turn leads the eye on across the water to Sunset Beach and the towers of West Vancouver.

Drop eyes instead to our own toes, and the reward is the interplay of seaweed, gritty sand, mussel shells and the angles and colours of each individual rock.

We backtrack throughVanier Park, drawn by the shrouded boats and bright Blue Cabin, all tucked up in Heritage Harbour.

This is the free, outdoors, floating component of the adjacent Vancouver Maritime Museum, offering a curated collection of vintage wooden boats and currently also hosting the Blue Cabin arts residency program.

We prowl each walkway, peer into the tent sheltering a restoration project…

and compensate for mostly shrouded boats by at least reading their historical signage…

and enjoying the dance between red bumper balls and glittering shafts of open water.

The Second, Predicted

Counting on sunshine (though well-bundled in winter clothing), I set out for a planned morning walk. This one will set off from Tsawwassen, in the City of Delta, and our rendezvous is the St. George SkyTrain station in the neighbouring City of Surrey.

The angles and brilliance of the building right next to the station…

are in dramatic contrast to the flowing lines, and the very different brilliance, of our chosen trail.

We’ve just taken the 12th Ave. entrance to the Dyke Trail, in Boundary Bay Regional Park.

This is a great, long curving ribbon of a park, all along the curve of Boundary Bay itself, and we’re here for the curl at the Tsawwassen end of that ribbon, looping south to Centennial Beach and around. We decide to walk out along the dyke, and then return on the Raptor Trail, in behind the dunes.

Plum blossoms here too, this time paired with the rough gold of winter fields rather than the emerald of winter moss on trees.

We’re nowhere near the Raptor Trail, not yet, but we meet one anyway — a juvenile Bald Eagle, peacefully contemplating life down by the water.

He’s not eating anything, he’s not doing anything, and he has no interest in any of us.

We are all extremely interested in him, however! People point, murmur, pass news about him one to another all along the trail. Farther on, a woman comfortably snugged down in a hollow, cradling the great long telephoto lens of a true twitcher, assures us she has already seen him, photographed him, and is now more interested in all those Black Oystercatchers at this end of the trail. (We turn our own attention to Oystercatchers for a while, glad that someone has identified them for us.)

We pivot at Centennial Beach, turning inland slightly, in between sand dunes, to join the Raptor Trail. Right on cue, a Coopers Hawk, silhouetted against the clouds.

Good grief, it is windy. And, good grief, that makes it so much colder! Little giggles of delight when, just for a moment, the wind quits smacking us around. My companion wishes he’d brought his tuque; I am smug with the earflaps down on my winter hat.

But no complaints. It is a glorious day. and the nip in the air puts that much more snap, that much more energy, in our walk.

A pause to admire this elegant Great Blue Heron, so very vertical…

and the Mallard in the adjacent rivulet, so very horizontal.

Another pause, for the exuberance of this tree, throwing its branches at the sky…

and a final pause, a giggle, a poke in each other’s ribs, at the very different mood evoked by these trees…

knocked crooked and proof that there are some very industrious beaver in the area.

Time for lunch. We set off, chattering about all we’ve seen and agreeing that we’ve had huge good luck with the weather.

(Still needles of rain, as I finish this post, and by now only 3C and heading on down the scale.)

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 15 March 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 15 March 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/03/15/sun-x-2/

Slow Learner

10 March 2026 – In downtown Vancouver this year, winter was a slow learner.

Finally, this very day, it remembered what to do.

Snow!

For the first time this year, I put on my winter coat.

I go out in the slop — real slop, not AI-generated — where this graffito…

says it all.

3 Comments
by icelandpenny on 10 March 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, street art, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 10 March 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/03/10/slow-learner/

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