16 November 2024 – I enjoy walking this ‘hood, this part of Fairview. It’s a quiet stretch of older wooden homes, all very human scale and welcoming, with their front porches and front gardens.
But this street, indeed this whole area, is adjacent to the Broadway traffic artery and lies within the ambit of the comprehensive Broadway Plan — which, for all its consultations and talk of public space, is focused on intensification.
Land Assembly billboards have become commonplace.
The future is on its way.
I’m with Graffito Guy. It’s gonna be ugly.
On a happier note!
The Very Large Waterfowl I showed you in the previous post has been identified.
In her comment on the post, Lynette d’Arty-Cross was cautious enough only to say she was “reasonably certain,” but that’s good enough for me. We’re looking at a juvenile trumpeter swan.
Thank you, Lynette.
Do the rest of you know her blog (In the Net! – Pictures and Stories of Life)? If not, click here. You’ll be glad you did.
12 November 2024 – It’s definitely a leaden sky up there, but down here there’s lots to look at. Plus there’s a rain jacket in my backpack. I am equipped.
Colours pop against all that grey.
Bright autumn leaves snagged in a still glowing shrub…
seed pods tawny against yellowing foliage…
seed pods cascading from their vines…
and a small tree, starkly elegant against its stone & brick backdrop…
all of them my companions, as I walk my way north down Scotia Street, flanking the east wall of…
the Brewery Creek Building.
Not its original name! Even “Fell’s Candy Factory,” still visible above the brass lettering, is not the original name.
Built c. 1904 as a storage cellar for Vancouver Brewery Ltd., this building was later (among other things) a candy factory, a creamery, a grease works and a stucco manufacturing plant before the restoration and renovations that, in 1993…
transformed it into a collection of live/work condos in a Class A heritage building.
New-builds are now springing up all around. It more than holds its own.
Though I like some of the sassy newcomers.
Especially ones that prove modest building materials can also hold their own — when deployed with bold colour and strong, clean lines.
And this is the back-alley view!
A bit farther north, I’m still caught up in the old/new mix that is Mount Pleasant these days. Low vintage buildings and early (2017 or so) Vancouver Mural Festival artworks mark East 3rd and the alley just off Main Street..
but behind them to the south rises one of the sleek new eco-conscious work facilities that are now reshaping the area, East 5th in particular.
I’m headed in the opposite direction, north & west to the east end of False Creek. My route takes me past Mountain Equipment now-American-Company-not-Canadian-Coop. I consciously Don’t Go There; I instead enjoy the exterior of this mass timber building. Including the corvine slogan under one pillar’s footing…
and droplets sliding down the water course built into the Quebec Street façade.
You see? It has rained, it will rain, but at the moment, it is not — not quite — raining.
I’m closing in on False Creek…
but it’s not the geodesic dome of Science World that catches my eye. it’s the runaway red balloon down there against the railing.
And then I forget all about the red balloon.
I can hear chimes & gongs & cymbals & whistles, and I know how to interpret them. They tell me that the glass tower by the Science World entrance, sadly silent during a long restoration, is once again in glorious, ridiculous, delightful, full-tilt operation. It has no name that I can find, but if ever any 2024 contraption deserved the name Rube Goldberg Machine — this is it.
Things clank, whiz, fly around, spiral and drop, tip and tilt, climb and do it again. A woman grins at me over her children’s heads. “The kids are the excuse. I could stand here all day.” I nod.
But we eventually move on …
I, past the reclining question-mark outside Science World’s creek-facing west wall that invites us to consider our daily choices, all of which affect the environment.
Question-mark nicely suits what happens next. I find myself in an impromptu focus group of SeaWall pedestrians — diversified in our demographics, but united in our conclusion.
Despite much conjecture among us, we remain puzzled. Goose? Swan? We settle for Very Large Waterfowl. We also agree that he/she is gliding over a sunken boat (the hull gleams greenish-white, the mast protrudes). Pleased with ourselves and each other, we go our various ways.
By the time I reach my Cambie Bridge cross-over point, the threat-of-rain has become really-rain.
I stand under bridge ramparts, exchange forecasts with a guy also pawing his backpack for a jacket, and watch a young woman toss her red umbrella aside so she can kick up her heels on one of the playground swings.
Jacketed & be-hatted, all zippered up, I climb my way up onto the bridge and head out over the water. I am so charmed by this graffito on the railing…
that I stand here until a ferry obligingly comes along, to include in the picture. (The wait gives me time to compile a Glad They Exist list, ferries being just one item. I find it a helpful exercise, very soothing, a counterbalance to all that I wish did not exist.)
And then I put the camera away, because, good grief, this is now serious rain.
And I then I take it out again, one last time.
Here at West 8th & Yukon, a living demonstration of the slogan back there under the MEC pillar.
Crows know! This crow knows he is very wet. And he is telling us all about it.
7 November 2024 – I walk along, getting some early-morning daylight into my system. I see that, even this late in the season, some leaves are still putting on a bravura show.
Then I look up. Up a bare tree trunk, all the way up, up & out over the street.
I see what no-leaves can do.
I stare at it in absolute delight. I narrow my eyes. Do an imaginary zoom for tighter focus.
It’s the dance of the fractals, isn’t it? Right there above my tip-tilted head. Some time does pass, before I lower my gaze.
Only to see a little girl, staring at me with the same intensity I have just given to those tree branches. It is a child’s stare — curious, open, honest, without malice. But still a little unnerving.
“Hello,” I say, “I like the monster on your coat.” (A happy monster in minimalist design, all bright eyes and friendly fangs, if you can picture it.) She giggles. “I like him too.” Her waiting mum leans back against the car, reassured about the way this bit of sidewalk interaction is progressing.
“My coat has pockets,” says the child, patting one for emphasis.
“Mine too!” I cry, patting mine as well. “I like pockets. You can put stuff in them.”
She nods. “And,” she adds — clearly a parting comment, mum is opening the car door — “and, when it’s cold, you can put your hands in your pockets too!”
With that, we go our separate ways, she to day-care and I to Dude Chilling Park, Sahalli Park and points all around.
(Please note: my coat pockets now contain gloves.)
3 November 2024 – This side of the equator, in this latitude range, deciduous trees are well into their annual sylvan strip tease.
They shed their leaves…
and shimmy through the winter in their bare branches.
Some trees strip from the top down, clinging to their knickers…
some strip from the bottom up, clutching their camisoles….
and some fling off their leaves any old which-way.
Some, like these front-door guardians, hang on defiantly, still full-dressed and glowing bright…
while others are already full-naked, brown/black against the sky.
The evergreens are wonderful and rich, I love their year-round colour, their generous textures and dimensions…
but… oh… just look at the stark, bold power of this naked silhouette. (Not to mention its effortless demonstration of fractals. Why beat your brain with formulae, when you could just go look at a tree?)
I am mostly tree-struck, on this walk, but as I weave my way back from Sahalli Park I notice some other things as well.
A few left-over Hallowe’en pumpkins (so three days ago!)…
the punchiest little free library ever, tucked into its embracing greenery…
(where to my amazement I am able to pick up a copy, in its original French, of the 1948 landmark political/ cultural/artistic Québec manifesto, Refus global)…
and, framed by bare branches (L) and evergreens (R) and a crimson vintage Mount Pleasant home, ‘way over there across Burrard Inlet and high on Grouse Mountain…
the season’s first snow.
Snow!!
I head home, chilled fingers suggesting it really is time to dig out some gloves, and stop at the door long enough to pick a few of the last surviving marigolds in our street-front display.
31 October 2024 – This little theme launches itself early yesterday evening, as I look out my window at a determined crow, en route his Burnaby roost in the driving rain.
It continues today, happily not in rain, as I walk homeward along False Creek. from the foot of Davie Street.
Where I see:
a seagull briefly resting on Jerry Pethick’s Time Top, en route (as wing direction soon suggests) Yaletown or thereabouts…
an Aquabus ferry en route the David Lam dock…
an impatient dog en route the Coopers’ Park off-leash dog park (once his owner stops fiddling with the gates)…
a flurry of leaves next to Coopers’ Park en route nowhere at all, but having themselves a brief moment of airborne excitement…
a young woman en route an even more limber body, at the Seawall in front of Coopers’ Park…
a Zipply courier en route his client, providing said client (per the website) with “a zero-emissions delivery solution,” all this in front of Cirque du Soleil’s production of Echo, en route (but not until February 2025) Houston, Texas…
and finally…
bus-riders, motorists, cyclists & pedestrians, collectively en route…
to everywhere they want their Compass cards, fuel tanks, legs & lungs to take them.
16 October 2024 – There’s “boring old Clock Time,” as I observed in my post of 13 July, and then there’s Crow Time — an infinitely more enjoyable way to measure the changing length of day. This means I can determine dawn-to-dusk by looking up the stats, or by simply looking out my window.
Crows leave their Burnaby roost for Vancouver roughly at dawn, and return from Vancouver to their roost roughly at dusk.
When I wrote about all this in mid-July, the afternoon commute passed my window at around 9:30 pm.
14 October 2024 – The second Monday in October and here we are: it is Thanksgiving.
Indigenous peoples have long honoured nature’s bounty; in 1578 Sir Martin Frobisher and crew celebrated their safe arrival in eastern Arctic waters (now Nunavut) with salt beef, biscuits & mushy peas; in 1606 Samuel de Champlain founded the Ordre de Bon Temps (Order of Good Cheer) to encourage settlers in New France (feasting and musketry volleys); in the 1750s what we now view as the traditional fare — turkey, squash, pumpkin — became common in Nova Scotia. Our Thanksgiving celebrations have gone on from there — finally, officially, settling on the second Monday in October by a 1957 Act of Parliament.
Back to 2024. Yesterday was the last Farmers’ Market of the season in Dude Chilling Park. By the time I arrive, late in the day, a lot of the produce has been snapped up. My own purchases are non-trad: a bag of pierogis and a jar of Malvani simmering sauce, both made by descendants of immigrants who brought these recipes with them. Traditional fare is still available as well, albeit in depleted quantities.
Tomatoes, for example…
squash…
and even squash that needs an explanation.
This Thanksgiving morning I visit our wonderful rooftop garden. I’m eager to see how much the pumpkins have grown since I photographed one of them during our Garden Party up there on 9 September.
Here’s what I saw then.
Here’s what I see this morning.
What did I expect?
Of course everything has been harvested, clipped, tidied away!
5 October 2024 – A theme that has unexpectedly imposed itself, and yes in places it’s a bit of a stretch, but you’ll work with me on this, won’t you?
First up, a photo from a few days ago, taken not with any tribute in mind, but simply as a cityscape moment: the dome of a heritage building against a lowering sky, framed by tram wires and traffic lights.
But I can pull it into the tribute theme. It is a tribute (A) to the Carnegie Foundation capital grants that sparked the creation of public libraries all over the world, including, in 1903, this one at Main & East Hastings in Vancouver; and, (B) to the City of Vancouver that restored and revived the building and reopened it in 1980 as the Carnegie Community Centre, a new name and new breadth of services for the same core purpose — respect, support and more opportunities for people who need them.
Today’s outing had no theme in mind. Well, none beyond visiting two parks on the eastern edge of the city — one for the first time — and then walking residential streets back home.
And if I must, I’ll defend this bucolic shot of Trout Lake in John Hendry Park…
by saying, “Yah, well, it’s my tribute to a weeping willow doing what weeping willows do best, plus look at the fancy trick it plays with its trunk!”
(You are, however, allowed to roll your eyes.)
It’s en route the next park — Clark Park (second-oldest in the city and, official blurbs point out, “the only one that rhymes”) — that, still unbeknownst to me, the tribute theme starts to gain traction.
I’m on East 14th, moving right along because I’m eager to cross Commercial Drive and set foot in the Park-That-Rhymes for the very first time.
And I stop.
This is odd. Where some previous tree trunks have twee little “fairy houses” as adornments, this one has two mugs.
Deliberately there, pushed into place.
I lean in.
I don’t know if this is a tribute from Mike & Ella, or to Mike & Ella, but tribute it surely is. I am ridiculously pleased that, on July 23, 2022, such a good time was had by all.
Next tribute, the other side of the Park-That-Rhymes, and the other side of its other street boundary at that, on East 15th.
It is a tribute to graffiti. By a developer. Really.
Conceptually, I am totally in favour. Aesthetically, I wish the resulting murals were more interesting.
And then I run into busy Knight St., and it’s horrible and crowded and there’s no near-by traffic light to get me to the other side and suddenly trying to continue west seems like a bad idea. So I stomp north on Knight for a bit, and catch a bus to take me even farther north, where I’ll jump off and go walk through Strathcona for a while.
Off a bus at Clark & William, and I wander north-westish for a while and suddenly know where I am.
I’m on the edge of freight train tracks and if I follow them, I’ll slide in behind Parker Street Studios, a wonderfully delapidated collection of buildings that manage to stay upright and house lots of creative studios.
Yes, look! A mannequin at the door, and train tracks beyond.
These buildings and everything in/on/around them — all a tribute to creativity. (And survival.)
Lots of art up and down the outside walls, as I walk along the tracks-side of Parker Street Studios, but this free-standing tripod creation is my favourite:
Finally across the tracks and a bit farther north & west, and I’m in Strathcona. I zig and I zag and I stop for some lunch and much-needed glasses of water at the Wilder Snail café, and then I straight-line it across Keefer Street, heading for Main and a bus uphill to home.
I’m deep into Chinatown, practically at Main, when my eye is snagged by one more mural, in the alley just before the intersection.
Yucho Chow, yes.
I remember watching a documentary about his life and work, the city’s first professional Chinese photographer who, from 1906 to 1949, documented not just the lives of Chinese immigrants but of many other ethnicities as well — people who weren’t comfortable going to white photographers, given the power structures of the day. This link takes you to a portal page about Yucho Chow, because the page includes lots of video options as well as text websites, and shows his importance to our records of life in this city.
I keep reading the alley wall, and realize that one tribute leads to another.
Bottom left corner of the photo above, you’ll see the words “Time for changes” and a name, the name of the artist who painted this mural. The name is in black, hard to read: Smokey D.
I take a few steps farther into the alley, just past that wooden utility pole, and find the next tribute.
By Smokey D. to the city. (I later learn online that the City, in return, paid tribute to him by proclaiming March 11, 2023, his birthday, as Smokey D Day, honouring his artistry and activism on behalf of the Downtown East Side community.)
There’s one final tribute in all this, don’t you think?
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 