3 July 2026 – It’s the motion that first catches my attention.
Not what is moving; just the fact of motion. Then I register what is moving. Lots of little white tags, dancing with the breeze that flutters through the branches of this tree.
Odd how one’s attention moves through stages, refining focus.
Next, I register the tree trunk, with its arc of red & white letters.
Finally, I tip back my head and start a flutter-dance of my own, reading tags.
1 July 2026 – It starts with moss. No. It starts with my desire — fresh from travels that have grounded me (literally) in realities of maritime and eastern Canada — now to ground myself once again in my temperate rainforest home.
I decide to visit the Camosun Bog, once again to spend time “listening to the moss.” Influenced by Gathering Moss (author, Robin Wall Kimmerer), I did this once before, and described it to you in my post of 3 February 2026.
Approaching the Bog, about to walk under that leafy arch and turn that pathway corner…
I know that, this time, it will be different. The February visit was at the height of winter rain; this July visit is full summer.
Now, the bog itself is dry…
and the mosses at the muddy edge …
are citrus green, not emerald.
Beyond, where moss beds mingle with bog plants, patches of moss are fast bleaching…
to the ghostly pallor of mid-summer.
“It is seasonal,” murmurs the moss. “Seasonal cycle, seasonal change.”
All around, all nature demonstrates that truth. As mosses step back, others step forward. Growth tips on the evergreens…
and riots of wildflowers along the paths — yellow…
purple…
and blue.
I sit on a bench, and let my mind drift with the pulse of change.
Drift past seasonal change to the open-ended, larger truth enunciated by Zen Buddhist monk Shunryu Suzuki: “Everything changes.”
Then, perhaps inevitably — this being Canada Day and I so recently immersed in so many components of this magnificent, fractious, generous, squabbling, exasperating, beloved country of mine — I let my mind drift into the possibilities of change in Canada.
Not just the risks. The possibilities.
What if?
Though constitutionally this country is a federation, we have confederation at our core — Canadian Confederation was “the process of federal union in which the British North American colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada [both Upper and Lower] joined together to form the Dominion of Canada.” (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
Our self-image is a mosaic, not (cf that country to the south) a melting pot. We live this image through our evolving concept of multiculturalism, which currently has the support of 66% of Canadians, a support base that even includes people who’d like to see less new immigration (Canadian Diversity Study 2026, the Environics Institute and Global Migration Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University).
What if we were to look for new ways to embrace these multiplicities? Ways that, instead of shredding us into isolated fragments, could strengthen the whole as a supple, breathing organism?
Celebrations around me, as I head for home, both public and back-yard private.
Built well into the 20th c. but designed in Victorian “classic Canadian riverboat” tradition, The Canadian Empress takes 56 passengers and offers beautifully-scaled (and informative) trips along both the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, with frequent stops for exploration ashore.
We board late afternoon, are taken for an early-evening cruise to view Montmorency Falls (taller than Niagara), and spend the night at anchor in the Louise Basin, before…
at 6:30 am, starting our journey. We pass through the 19th-c. locks that protect anchored craft from the river’s 6-metre tidal variations; we take one last look at the city, with the Château Frontenac en haut and three red-&-white Coast Guard vessels en bas…
and we settle in for life on the river, its waters already a-glitter with early morning sunshine.
The river is still broad but, even so, we can always see both shores, and the life that populates them. Sometimes industrial; sometimes, as here approaching Champlain, a scattering of homes.
First stop: Trois-Rivières — population now some 150,000 and both larger and more diversified than when I visited it decades back, to interview an innovative high-school principal for a CBC documentary I was preparing.
I mention “diversified” because for more than 100 years (late 1890s – 2000), this small city was at the heart of the Canadian pulp and paper industry. Drawing on lumber from the boreal forests of the region & the waters of the St-Maurice River, it helped make Canada the world’s largest newsprint exporter by 1913 and the world’s largest producer by 1926. Now a by-gone era, for multiple reasons — but that history is honoured, explained, demonstrated in Musée Boréalis, created within and around the footprint of the old CIP mill, in its day the world’s largest.
I marvel at the old machinery (here, in the Filtration Plant)…
in ignorance but with fascination and respect.
Also with tattered and probably inaccurate memories of a visit to a pulp & paper mill in my small childhood, taken on a personal field trip by my engineer father whose company sold machinery to these mills. I remember whoever-it-was detailed to show me around keeping a very firm grip on my overalls as I peered — amidst all the noise & heat & odours — into a swirling vat of pulp. Wouldn’t do to lose the kid overboard! That is not a joke. As they explained at the museum, occasionally a worker did fall in (safety standards being laughable, in the day), and there was no saving him.
But! But! We don’t just marvel and listen and learn, we get to make our very own little squares of paper! The lively young guide gives us the same cheerful instructions she offers adults & kiddies alike. Soon we are dunking our frames in the pulp, lifting them, finger-wiping a margin, blotting (both sides), covering & ironing (both sides)… and then, squealing like kiddies, we flick-flick-flick our frames…
and our little rectangles of paper drop onto the mat. You betcha I’m taking it home with me.
Dinner aboard and then — bless these long June evenings — still time, light and warmth for those so inclined to go wander the town on their own.
Isn’t non-plane travel the best? No security rigamaroles, just a reminder to be back onboard by X hour, and meanwhile, go amuse yourself. So I do.
Up on the three-tier Esplande de Trois-Rivières, I — in the company of assorted Tri-fluviens (and their dogs) — stroll and admire the view. This freighter, for example (bound for Iceland & Greenland, our captain tells us), bathed in the golden glow of early evening.
I turn slightly inland into the old city, walk a stretch of Rue des Ursulines, parallel to the waterfront…
looking east toward both Parc des Ursulines and Cimetière des Ursulines. I don’t go that far; I amble a few more residential streets and return to the Empress.
It’s only the next morning — this morning — that I remember the captain also said something-or-other about “squalls” to come.
I admire Île des Barques, off Ste-Anne-de-Sorel, through rain-bright steps under a rain-wet canopy.
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.
Plan was, a minimalist little post titled Tended & Wild, contrasting much-pampered Tended…
with plucky little Wild…
and noting that, much as I appreciate well-tended gardens, my heart is with the spindly alley plant smack up against a grubby window with wonky blinds.
That was the plan.
But then I zagged right, landed myself on Quebec Street, kept walking south, crossed East 19th, and came up against The Fence.
The Fence! The Fence of happy memories! The Fence I can never find on purpose! The Fence with its — admittedly now deteriorating — wildly exuberant artwork. Like this:
And this:
A block-long demonstration of this identity:
I toss Tended/Wild aside, and plan a little tribute to Quebec Street.
I keep walking Quebec (BC), right until it swerves west…
and morphs into East 24th Avenue.
When I turn back north, I decide to follow, not Quebec, but, let’s call it, Back of Quebec — the alley beyond Quebec Street.
And then I laugh. All this is the perfect tease for posts to come, next week and all month long.
Because.
Because tomorrow I will exchange Quebec (BC) for Quebec (QC)…
in a two-flight bounce from Pacific-coast Vancouver to mid-St. Lawrence Quebec City.
The next day, one more bounce will take me to the real Back of Quebec…
this red-tinted archipelago beyond mainland Quebec, poised in triangulation with PEI and Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean — islands that, despite their location, are part of Quebec.
The Magdalen Islands.
Les Îles de la Madeleine. I’ll be staying on Île de la Grande Entrée, but exploring more widely. Then, next Friday, I’ll take the ferry from Cap-aux-Meules and follow the dotted line to Souris, PEI.
After that? After that, the adventure continues. I’ll keep you posted.
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.
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.
10 May 2026 – I expect the boots, and the overall look of things. It’s all glorious and impressive, but also to be expected. We are in a large (153 hectare), forested park in the BC Lower Mainland…
rich with Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar and Western Hemlock soaring high overhead…
and, back at eye level, massive stumps of earlier growth…
the textured bark of current growth…
and the bright green of the newest growth of all, this season’s growing tips.
There is a creek chattering its way down-slope, to be crossed on wooden bridges, sturdy and firm despite moss on the railings…
or, for the sure-footed high-steppers in the crowd, to be crossed here and there on a log.
All normal, right?
What I do not expect is a camper trailer. Hanging in a tree.
We see two: this one is the better-built, more colourful, and — given the circular openings — more hopeful of an avian tenant.
I spot a boardwalk snaking through the trees…
and I am mildly puzzled: we are not in a bog, and there does not appear to be any need to protect the ground from hikers’ boots.
All very logical… if this were indeed a boardwalk.
It is not.
It is “a wooden feature,” says my companion, “for mountain bikers.” I believe him, because he is an MBVE (Mountain Biking Voice of Experience). Four decades of mountain biking to his credit, including many marathons both provincial and international — and with a lot of his training for all that, in this very park.
We are in Watershed Park. It is the largest park in the City of Delta, and well-laced with 11 km of trails, almost all of them multi-use — walking, jogging, biking, horseback riding. We entered at Pinewood Drive, the upper of the two sites shown on that vertical block on the right-hand side, and we are wandering along in a clock-wise loop. It takes us down to the lower tip of the triangle, and then back up and around via The Meadow, across some dedicated biking trails, and past the Gravity Bowl jump before returning us to city streets.
Because the MBVE is looking at the forest and its trails with a biker’s eye (and memories), I now experience the forest from that same perspective.
“I used to bring the grandsons here,” says the MBVE, “taught them the basics. There’s a lot of good features here for that, places where people can build skills and confidence.”
As we walk, he shows me what to look for, helps me see.
“This ladder is really good for beginners. Wide, uncomplicated, and…” — he beckons me to come take a closer look — “really sturdy. Look how well everything is connected, nailed in place.”
We pause at another wide, sturdy, ladder-type wooden feature. This one, though, is considerably more precipitous in the drop.
We are viewing it from the descent side. Nobody, he assures me, is expected to grind their way up that incline.
These wooden bike features are not all ladders. Sometimes…
they are log features. (Bumpity-bump.) And — the MBVE again invites me to check the construction — as stoutly connected as the ladders.
We pause at the Gravity Bowl jump. It was definitely NOT one for the grandsons’ level of skill, back in 2020 — but one where Grandpa got to strut his stuff. Nailed it! He grins at the memory.
He leads me to the edge of another bike-trail — the trail and its signage more proof that not everything in this park is beginner-friendly.
Big laugh from the MBVE, who points out not just the hard-ass metal lettering on the sign, but also the black biker’s helmet visor nailed to the tree above it.
I peer into that twisty gully, and cheerfully recognize a risk I will never take.
We comment as we walk on the very slightly “curated” feel to the forest. Nothing unnatural, nothing jarring. Just… an awareness of a little openness & breathing space in the canopy, of a lack of obstacles underfoot, of a lack of sharp twigs at eye level. Of very selective attention. We therefore stop with some interest, on the way out, to consult the Before & After legends in the Preventative Measures Diagram.
We nod. It feels right.
Something else is very right, as we emerge from the park — a little girl has set up a lemonade stand. A loonie a glass, and the MBVE springs for two. Yes, she made the lemonade herself (we nod approvingly, it’s not too sweet) and yes, the money is for her. “Are you saving for something?” asks the MBVE. “A bike!” she exclaims.
You know what happens next. He beams at her, and is soon deep in conversation with her proud daddy, who wants to know more about skills-building in Watershed Park. Finally she collects our empty cups, and scampers off to deposit them carefully in the complicated bear-proof litter bin.
Pretty soon we scamper off as well. It’s time for steaming bowls of Vietnamese pho, and some rich Vietnamese coffee.
"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 