13 August 2026 – An escaped balloon gets me thinking about “benign neglect.”

This is not what caused US political advisor Daniel Moynihan to coin the phrase, back in 1970. In a memo to then-President Richard Nixon, he suggested that the issue of race relations “could benefit from a period of benign neglect.” Not surprisingly, it was controversial, and is still argued today — both his own good/bad faith intentions, and the consequences over time.

My mind is not there. My mind is on this blue balloon.

I am at the corner of Pine and West 6th, early for an appointment and therefore with time to kill. What better than a bit of a bimble into the Arbutus Greenway? That’s the plan, but then, as I’m about to cross Pine and enter the Greenway, I look north on Pine and get distracted by a blue balloon.

OK, first I am distracted by the double hit of blue: car plus balloon. Then I focus on the balloon. And then I focus on what is all around it — the happy eco-consequences, for this street corner, of human neglect.

I start to explore. I’m smiling at everything, even though I can’t identify any of it.

Not entirely true. I can identify a bee when I see one, and I am seeing a great many.

Like this guy, dragging down one of these bright orange flowers.

A late-summer abundance of shaggy growth. There is cool green-&-silver elegance to be had…

and also the hot flamboyance of magenta.

I turn my back on Ms Flamboyance, and notice that there is a degree of human intervention after all: a picnic table and benches.

Severely functional — weathered planks atop metal grids filled with rubble — but also elegant. Designed. And, look, there’s a pathway, edged with the same design signature.

I follow the path out to the corner of Pine and West 5th where I see both a line of grubby concrete blocks and a weathered black plaque.

I read the plaque.

And it all makes sense. It’s a pollinator project in a pop-up park. By the look of it, the project was established some years ago, and since then has benefitted from human inaction. The benign consequences, for nature, of human neglect. Indeed, the plaque urges non-action upon us: “Do not disturb. Please don’t bug the pollinators…”

Later, at home, I read more. This street-corner project is a good decade old by now, and slated to be incorporated into a new park, Burrard Slopes. (On this 2016 Park Board map, it is still place-marked as “Future Park.”)

I am still too early for my appointment. I walk west on West 5th, back into the busyness of the city…

and very agreeably fill the last 15 minutes of spare time with a latte at Elysian Coffee, over on Burrard Street.

See the dog bowl, under the Elysian sign? Yrs Truly took in a near-empty bowl, waited for the barista to refill it, and returned the full bowl to the sidewalk.

Benign neglect has its place. So does benign activism.