2 June 2025 – Only moss is on the agenda. Muzzles & monsters turn up on their own.
Moss is on the agenda because it’s about to go into its seasonal decline. Moss thrives in cool damp, suffers in dry heat. I want one last fix, and the Camosun Bog is the place to pay tribute.
As boardwalk signage points out…
the bog is, literally, built on moss.
Fortunately, despite the glossy new salal leaves and the bright growing trips of the evergreens that encircle the bog and speak of this new season…
the mossy carpet is still green, not yet bleached to its mid-summer pallor.
The moss is not just on the ground, either. Look at these trees!
So, as I leave the bog and start meandering north-east through the neighbourhood of West Point Grey, I am still moss-optimistic. And, despite distractions like this spiral of Buddhist prayer flags on a street-corner shrub…
and this bear-moose duo, endlessly paddling their way across somebody’s front yard…
I do see more moss.
Just look at these sidewalk sentinels, still wearing their winter finery, as they march their way down West 19th Avenue!
After all this, my attitude is: agenda met. No more expectations. I’ll just keep walking for a while — get in those steps — and then catch a bus.
Next thing I know, down by Alma & West Broadway, I’m being muzzled.
This is such good news.
There’s a mural by this artist in my own neighbourhood, one that both pleases & frustrates me. I like it for its own sake, but the style very loosely reminds me of Toronto street artist BirdO…
and I really, really would like to know the Vancouver artist’s name. Can’t get close enough to the mural near my home to look for any ID — but here, there’s a whole wall-full of his images, in an open alley.
Multiple images, and a tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat (the crown, upper right)… and a plaque identifying the artist. I learn, and it is my pleasure to inform you, that this mural is the work of Tokyo-born, Vancouver-based contemporary artist Taka Suda.
I am happy indeed, as I drop down the last few blocks to West Broadway.
An eye-flick left, into another alley, where the little window in this tired old shed…
suggests it must have started life as a stable. Surely that was the hay loft, above?
After that, my eyes flick straight ahead, on down busy Alma Street.
Another high rise going up, ho-hum. But then eye-flick becomes eye-focus, as I notice the monster riding high at the angle of that top corner.
See it? Shades of Hunchback of Notre Dame…
A passing pedestrian notices my fixed gaze, and nods her head. “Like gargoyles, aren’t they?” she says, her smile showing she quite likes the idea.
“Gargoyles”? Plural? I walk closer, on down Alma. (I feel like I’m stalking the building.)
And yessirree, gargoyles-plural. There are three, one defining the top corner of each ledge.
The closer I get, the clearer they become, and I need to refine my language.
Not monsters. Not gargoyles.
Ravens. (Later online research tells me this building — a luxury residential rental building — is named The Raven.)
I spin around for an angle that shows them in triumphant profile…
and then, finally!, I catch my bus back home.
WALKING WOMAN 
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 2 June 2025I find those ravens off-putting for some reason. I like real ravens, especially the ones I saw in NWT. Tough and intelligent. But these facsimiles look like cheap rip-off copies from Bram Stoker’s house.
icelandpenny
/ 3 June 2025Yes, the real raven is the one to admire, and thsee are glitzy — an outsized representation of the design cliché of the day. My fascination was not aesthetic approval, it was just the delight of noticing an unexpected detail in an otherwise routine situation, and then seeing — oh, look at that — there were three of them.
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 3 June 2025Agreed – I would have been fascinated by them as well!
Rio
/ 3 June 2025First off, Spagnum Moss!!! I had a friend who had a large property in northern Quebec covered with forest and thanks to foraging I got my costume for halloween: The Forest Floor. The colours of the moss were blues and greens and soft browns and I sewed it to a green body suit along with twigs and a fallen nest. Of course by the end of the evening you could follow my path with all the bits that fell off. I felt very “performance” and bored everyone who spoke to me with information on the wonder and importance of spagnum moss. People just didn’t care in the 90’s.
And I know you dislike highrises, but they can be (but aren’t always) a good environmental choice for housing lots of people. I am one of those people. Pirvate lawns, green with chemicals, and flowers that delight few pollinators, backyard swimming pools (there was enough water in the private swiming pools in backyards in L.A. to have employed sprinklers on all the houses). The sprall that comes with every car owned to get people from suburbs to hubs of employment are just not sustainable.
I have a lot of green space to look at from on high. A pair of peregrine falcons soar off the top of my building and the next frequently. During the Covid isolation it was my great delight to see them play — because it could only be called play — as each tried to see who could ride the up-drafts without flapping a wing for the longest. I remember once one flew close enough to my 15th floor window I could see him look right as if to say, “Don’t you just wish you could do this?” And I did.
icelandpenny
/ 3 June 2025Hi Rio — I love your moss Hallowe’en costume, great idea & so well carried out. I’m upset to have given you the impression I am categorically, no exceptions, opposed to highrises. Not so, my view is much more nuanced. I think with this, as with much else, a great deal depends on quality & context. I believe that in the built eco-system, as i nature’s own, diversification is much healthier than monoculture, and that the more options we have, the more quickly and well we can address changing circumstances. I now live in a highrise (Maybe medium-high…) & love it. I agree that a quality building, in the right zoning/demographic/etc context, delivers all the benefits you list. I also believe that poor quality highrises, in a scatter-gun approach, destroy community & livability. BTW, my “ho-hum” was not disapproval, it was my opinion that there’s nothing to notice per se in another building going up — the only interest for me in this one was the ornamentation.
Rio
/ 3 June 2025I should not have assumed you disliked highrises per say. I’m just finding it frustrating how many people my age are insisting on keeping suburban homes while having more and more trouble maintaining them, refusing to give up their lawns and the gardens while living in two rooms inside big houses full of stuff they are now unable to sort through, driving to and from shopping malls and groaning at “highrises”. They are a demographic who vote and in Ontario’s GTA they vote for more sprawl and more roads.
That is not you. And it’s not me.
If this large demographic could change we would have better transit and better buildings with housing and more diverse communities because we would vote for it. We would have inclusion and accessibility and a plan for alternate ways to move around, (not token bike lanes but serious planning for a variety of modes of getting there). All this could happen because we would not be using our influence or our votes to maintain approaches that are stiffling, isolating and choking us, literally all of us, young and old.
Sorry for the rant! I find as a senior I am owning my rants. 😉
J Walters
/ 3 June 2025There is always so much to look at in your walks posts, but this one was particularly enaging (as you can imagine) because of the murals, and the artist Taka Suda and also because I did not know about the crown. Seriously interesting post. Thank you.
icelandpenny
/ 3 June 2025The Basquiat crown story was one of the factoids associated with the AGO Basquiat exhibit — I was still in Toronto at the time and an AGO volunteer, so I learned a great deal — glad you were interested in Taka Suda, do you agree there’s at least a loose resemblance to BirdO’s style? I was always a big fan of his work as well
J Walters
/ 3 June 2025Yes, re BirdO style. Do you follow Resa McConaghy’s graffiti and murals site? I have followed her for years and her street art knowledge is incredible. Sorry, off on a tangent here but your BirdO comment made me go looking. https://graffitiluxandmurals.com/category/birdo/
icelandpenny
/ 3 June 2025I did not know her site… and i’ve just subscribed. Thanks! All those wonderful Toronto names, whose work I don’t get to see in person any more. Do you know Mary Crandall’s WP blog, “As I Walk Toronto”? Very streetscape, very street art, a good eye: https://mcfcrandall.blog
J Walters
/ 3 June 2025That walks blog is definitely a keeper also, thanks.
Bronlima
/ 3 June 2025Fascinated by the old barn.. Maybe the ravens lived there before moving to the high rise!