All posts in category Architecture

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.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 26 July 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 26 July 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/07/26/out-the-door/

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.

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 21 July 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, Nature, photography, Vancouver
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 21 July 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/07/21/sea-to-sky-to-tanabe/

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.

3 Comments
by icelandpenny on 22 June 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, photography, Travel, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 22 June 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/06/22/locked-sheltered-delivered/

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
Tagged , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 16 June 2026

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

Playing With Red & Green

24 May 2026 – Mostly red. One great swirl of red.

The title of this 1981 steel sculpture (Alan Chung Hung) is Spring. Of course it is! Even with that bit of temporary fencing on the left, we can see that the structure is a spring, a handsome great spring that earns its keep — or would have us believe it earns its keep, holding up the second level of Robson Square.

I play along.

See? There’s a sturdy spring end, doing its job.

I’m used to this particular joke, so my attention moves on, enjoys the play of sculpture with context: the light, the shadows, the plaza lines of Robson Square, the hints of the BC Provincial Law Courts above, the stripe of green shrubbery, the bicycles.

I move in, start prowling, curious to see the play from different angles.

Peer low: glimpses of that upper level, one fragment of the magic on display over my head, the marriage of Arthur Erickson‘s architecture with Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s landscape architecture to create the flowing, harmonious Law Courts whole.

Peer high: a view the other way, back toward downtown city towers.

Come closer, peer through the spiral — and frame another photographer. (Photographing the architecture, please note; not himself.)

Come even closer and, in all this sunlight, the uniform gloss of the red starts to break up.

Come even closer than that, and my eye starts telling me lies. Look! it says; alternating twists of silver & red! My brain knows this isn’t true, and my eye doesn’t care. It sees what it sees. Or… “sees.”

Time to back up a little? Restore agreement between eye & brain?

Still close, but at a different angle. All the spirals are once again red. Set off by the green of that modest, meticulously placed, line of shrubs-in-tubs.

One more re-angle, and now the spirals and their reflections bounce back and forth across the line of shrubs. I imagine an invisible tennis ball of light rays, flashing across that net of visible green…

And then, I walk on.

Deliberately one street over, now southbound on Howe…

where a cascade of Oberlander greenery washes my eye clean of all that red.

9 Comments
by icelandpenny on 24 May 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Vancouver, Walking
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 24 May 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/05/24/playing-with-red-green/

The Discreet Charm of the Hill-Top Park

17 May – It’s the walk up-slope Marpole Avenue that brings the old movie title to mind.

Is that not the living, leafy definition of “discreet charm”? Quiet, understated, harmonious and soothing.

In other words, nothing at all like Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie! Luis Buñuel’s 1972 comedy was a satire that skewered the more hectic, and less appealing, characteristics of the upper middle class.

Doesn’t matter. The title still rings in my head as I cross The Crescent and enter Shaughnessy Park.

For one thing, this small park (1.45 Ha) was very much originally for, and is still surrounded by, the bourgeoisie. It is the circular heart within a circular street (confusingly called a Crescent) that crowns the height of land in Shaughnessy and was designed in 1909 — homes plus park — to become the city’s new upper-class neighbourhood, on the assumption that the original West End enclave was losing its exclusive character.

I’m climbing my way to that circle-within-a-circle, shown upper-right in this 2015 City of Vancouver Heritage Action Plan map.

The park is not only surrounded by the bourgeoisie, from the moment I set foot on its gravel pathway, it glimmers with its own discreet charm.

Nothing flashy. Trees, grass, this path, a few benches, and…

one endearingly simple swing, whose wooden seat is wide enough, and sturdy enough, to snuggle two at a time.

Who needs flash, when you’ve got these trees? I am lost in ignorant respect for the size, quantity and variety on offer, everything from towering west-coast conifers to shrubs and small trees riotously in blossom.

Some, like this rhododendron, are still in full bloom…

while others are past their peak, now transformed into discreetly charming ground litter.

I only learn later, thank you VHF (Vancouver Heritage Foundation), that this is more than an impressive bunch of trees. It comprises a small but carefully selected arboretum — 47 species, many rare or unusual, some found nowhere else in the city. (Japanese snowball, says the list, flowering ash, English hawthorne, copper beech, sourwood, large leaf linden…)

Not surprisingly, the trees are well maintained. There is some selective tree removal…

where even the stump is a thing of discreet charm, shade upon shade, ripple by ripple.

The homes ringing The Crescent are as true to their era as is the park, one typical example glimpsed here through mossy park-tree branches.

Tudor Revival, says the VHF: a Vancouver phenomenon 1910-1940, a period of “romanticism and nostalgia” when wealthy local WASPs wanted not only to pretend they were Very-Very-British, but also wrap themselves in pseudo late-medieval architecture. There are relatively few homes around The Crescent, and most of them are now registered heritage sites.

I stand by the swing, and look across The Crescent at the two horse chestnut trees immediately opposite. Both are splendid, both a-blaze with their spring-time “candles,” but while the towering white tree on the right is a common sight in various parts of Canada, including here, the diminutive red variety next to it is not. Both were carefully placed, as was the rest of the public and private landscaping, all of it laid out in that encompassing 1909 design.

Little traffic up here, as befits a discreetly charming enclave.

I politely wait for crow and cyclist to pass on by — I, too, can be charming — and cross the street. Time to follow The Crescent to one of its spokes, and down-slope myself back to Granville Street.

Now out of the park, now up against homeowners’ boundary walls, I discover there is nothing discreet or charming about their security arrangements. An ornate old side-gate may make do with a padlock…

but every front wall is adorned with large, blunt signs.

Not content with shouting WARNING at you, the security firms usually also boast that their response time is less than ten minutes.

Larceny is not on my mind. I am unperturbed.

7 Comments
by icelandpenny on 17 May 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 17 May 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/05/17/the-discreet-charm-of-the-hill-top-park/

After the Laughter

5 May 2026 – We meet in among the 14 bronze statues that comprise the A-Maze-ing Laughter art installation in Morton Park. The statues are all laughing…

and so is every visitor, which means the statues fulfill their objective: to spread joy.

Fun as they are, they are our rendezvous, not our destination.

We take ourselves a bit farther west & north, and join the Comox-Helmcken Greenway pretty well where it starts, at Chilco Street just outside Stanley Park. Seawall to the north (along Burrard Inlet), Seawall to the south (along English Bay / False Creek) — but what if you’re stubborn enough to want a city-street path across town?

You put your wheels, or your feet, onto the Greenway. That’s what.

It is well-developed between Stanley Park and Hornby Street, more concept than reality from Hornby to Pacific Blvd. at the False Creek end — but well worth the hoof when (ingrate that you are) you’re a little tired of all those sparkling waves.

Out here in the west end, the pedestrian/cyclist amenities are well-established:

e.g. bike lanes, freshly painted.

e.g. sidewalk art, almost freshly chalked (we comply, giggling).

e.g. bright new spring growth, glowing on every tree and shrub.

e.g. volunteer-tended corner gardens, part of the City’s Green Streets program.

e.g. murals on the walls of Lord Roberts Elementary School (this particular section, Dizzy Dancers, the work of the kids, who first threw their silhouettes on the wall, and artist Steve Hornung).

e.g. a multi-component art installation, Triumph of the Technocrat, punching up the grounds of a high-end rental building at Broughton, with a corner sculpture…

a flowing watercourse…

and even an Xs & Os table…

conceived by Reece Terris, and an equally flowing narrative poem all along the watercourse by Greg Snider.

e.g. alcoves with benches, chairs, greenscape & inventive hardscape — here bicycle wheels.

e.g. whimsy-artsy bird houses up above allotment gardens. (My companion sees a real, live bird fly into one of them.)

And then.

And then the Greenway changes.

We cross Hornby, we’re now on Helmcken, and we hit gritty Granville Street.

The Regal Hot (look beneath the traffic signal box) was impressive in its 1910 day, and still wears its heritage Art Deco architecture, but it is now better-known for its SRO (single-room occupancy) notoriety.

That said, things are changing — which makes this stretch of the cross-town walk as interesting, as valid, as the attractive part out west. SROs are being decommissioned, proposals for new projects are being presented. This is not a good-news story for everyone: if the SROs badly failed the marginal community they were meant to serve, fancy new developments won’t solve our housing crisis either. No, this is not necessarily good news, but it is all part of the city story.

Now solo, I carry on east past Granville, past that shape-shifting story; onward to a story of revival and glitter. I’m about to drop down the slope into Yaletown, with its boutiques and its artisan-everything and its cafés & restos and, yes…

its bright pink parasols at Hamilton Street.

Yet another block east, corner of Mainland, and I stare in amazement at one of the street’s mani-pedi establishments. My mind flips back to my friend’s comment, as we read the Triumph of the Technocrat text. “I understand every single word,” said this extremely well-educated person. “I just don’t understand what those words mean, all together.”

Same thing here. “Russian manicure?” I ask myself. “Authentic or otherwise?” I have no idea. This is so not the real me! In fact, anybody reading this who knows the Real Me is by now in fits of laughter.

As am I. The amusement carries me another few blocks, right down to Pacific Blvd., False Creek, and my route home. Laughter started the walk; laughter ends it.

,

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 5 May 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 5 May 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/05/05/after-the-laughter/

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
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 17 April 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/04/17/walking-the-dogleg/

Angularities of Light & Shadow

5 March 2026 – Isn’t “angularities” a wonderful word? All knobbly, just like the shapes it describes.

Vocabulary is not in mind, as I set out, though light certainly is. We had a prediction of rain; we received sunshine, and I revised plans accordingly — a long, happy walk to the noon-hour Dance Centre performance, not a quick dash to a rain-splattered bus.

My route will take me down to False Creek, then west along its north shore to Richards or Granville before angling north into town.

Light! After days of drizzle. Blazing sky above the new-build just off Main at East 5th.

Then my eye tumbles down the building, to land on those shadows streaking across the pavement.

I’m set. I have my imprint. Never mind blazing sky: I want the angularities of light and shadow, as they dance with every building they meet.

Into the N/S alley between Main & Quebec streets, and it’s dance-time.

Standing at the intersection of this alley with the E/W alley between 5th & 4th avenues, I am as goggle-eyed…

as this vintage mural on the wall beside me.

Horizontal shadows running along that flowered wall to the north…

vertical light bursting through shadows, right at the corner…

shadowed walls both sides of the E/W alley, but look how those flowers pop with colour, even so…

long rays of light across the shadowed intersection with East 4th…

and a whole sequence of shadows to pull me on north, from the puddle just to my right, down the muted wall to the blocky rectangle at the intersection, and on across the street into that well of darkness beyond.

Bubbling pools among the condo towers, N/W of East 1st and Quebec…

where light & dark translate to marine tones of green & blue.

An old friend, at Science World: the Tower of Bauble. But this time I notice the shadows more than the mechanisms…

the way a shadow-shaft enters from below and emerges on the right in an arc of colours.

Shadows, I now realize, can be a lot more interesting than the objects that create them. Boring-old, routine-old, perfectly ordinary fencing along the edge of Creekside Park…

is a lot more intriguing when thrown as Mondrian-esque patterns on grass & concrete.

Similarly, shadows of flags at the Plaza of Nations ferry dock…

are much more enjoyable than the shamefully faded real flags above our heads.

I may be besotted with angularities, but I’m willing to make exceptions.

For example, for this curve encircling a False Creek viewing bench in Coopers’ Park.

Back to the angular:

the entrance to an underground garage at the foot of Drake Street.

Then, waiting for the construction worker’s nod at Drake & Richards, heavily cordoned for the delicate crane operation taking place between existing towers, I take a picture that has no relationship at all to light & shadow. (Though it has angularities a-plenty.)

It’s just very much of the moment, and I am suitably awe-struck at the sight of that worker in the top-level cage being positioned by the crane.

Camera tucked away after that: time to step smartly and get myself to Dance Centre.

Where, to my complete surprise, light, shadow and angularities all reappear.

The stage setting is entirely in the play of light and shadow, and the Ne.Sans Opera & Dance performers are accompanied by, first, the music of Philip Glass and, second, the Cello Suites of J.S. Bach.

Glass, Bach and contemporary dance! I think they fit perfectly, each with each other, and I then try to puzzle out why. Perhaps because the word “angularity” is already in my head, I add an adjective, and I am satisfied. “Flowing angularity.” That’s it. The angularity of the exquisite precision of every note, both composers; the angularity of the exquisite precision of every gesture, all three dancers — but also the flow of the music, the flow of the dance.

Then I think about my walk, about its angularities, and I add “flowing” to that experience as well.

The flow of light particles; the flow of the wind; the flow of time; the flow of shadows moving with time to new angles and positions; the flow of my time, my steps, my thoughts; the flow from that walk to this post.

Each instant its own angle, dancing in a constant flow.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 6 March 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 6 March 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/03/06/angularities-of-light-shadow/

On The Bounce

24 February 2026 – Rays of sunshine flashing all over the place, and colours bouncing around with them.

Well, no, not literally. But it looks, it feels, like that.

I stand at the intersection of E. Broadway & Main, deliberately missing two green lights, transfixed by the transformation of the Yarn Bomber’s “Be Kind” slogan and companion heart.

After years of exposure, the colours have faded and the wool is bedraggled. Construction screening now hides all that, and today’s sunshine throws us the words and image in dramatic, high-contrast relief.

Moments later I turn into the alley that will lead me to the Salvation Army drop-off centre, my eye primed for the bounce of light, colour and shadow.

Barely into the alley, and a perfectly ordinary wooden staircase delivers all that.

A few more steps, and look: green/yellow wooden pole, blue/pink/black garbage bins beyond, and down there in the distance, the turquoise blunt end of a Sally Ann truck. (I just have to stand in this ramshackle alley and look around. Colour smacks me in the eye.)

Even this tattered fabric car-shelter is on the bounce. Metallic silver, varying shades of blue in the window panel, and a vivid yellow RESERVED on the pavement for extra impact.

How fitting that right at the Scotia St. end of the alley, just where I turn into the Sally Ann compound, I find the splashiest colour bounce of all: this 2020 VMF mural, Vancouver: a People-Powered Future. (I later learn the artist, Oakland Galbraith, is only 12 years old at the time, which makes it even more wonderful.)

Next day, more sunshine, more bounce — starting with my own slight geographic bounce, down to the Devonian Harbour Park on Burrard Inlet at the edge of Stanley Park.

I happen to think the park’s signature sculpture installation is OK-fine, but not outstanding. Today, in all this blazing sunshine, it is outstanding. Today, there is nothing solo about Solo (Natalie McHaffie, 1986); it offers a whole conversation among its elements.

Neon-bright turquoise cedar panels play against stainless steel framework that seems to ripple in the light…

and, together, they throw sharp black outlines against the green grass.

Later, at the eastern end of my walk, I eye the bright edge to each peak on the Canada Place fabric roof…

and realize the sun can throw sharp white outlines just as easily as black.

Clever old sun.

Leave a comment
by icelandpenny on 24 February 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by icelandpenny on 24 February 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/02/24/on-the-bounce-2/

« Older Posts

  • WALKING… & SEEING

    "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"

  • Recent Posts

  • Walk, Talk, Rock… B.C.-style

  • Post Categories

  • Archives

  • Blog Stats

    • 135,560 hits

  • Since 14 August 2014

    Flag Counter

  • Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 2,089 other subscribers