All posts in category City Walks

a described route & walk in an urban environment

New Moss, New Builds, New Snow & a Very Calm Cat

10 January 2026 – I have an errand, down by Pacific Central Station, and the skies are not heaving anything at anybody. I am happy indeed as I walk north on Scotia Street.

Even happier when, near East 2nd, I get to moon over yet another growth of fresh winter moss on a curb-side tree.

Oh, I know. This is a perfectly ordinary photo of a perfectly ordinary patch of moss, and either you share my obsession and moon along with me, or you shake your head and move on.

As I also do.

Errand accomplished, weather still surprisingly agreeable, I keep walking north. Cutting through False Creek Flats, I see that this stretch of battered old warehouses is, apparently, finally being demolished.

All the signs suggest this conclusion: windows boarded up, dumpsters out front, bright blue mesh fencing. Down there at the far end, the kind of new-build we can likely expect — structures to welcome more “knowledge industry” activities.

Across Terminal Ave., heading indeed toward the terminal (Pacific Central Station), I look up while waiting for a light to change. It gives me time to admire the vee of SkyTrain tracks overhead.

I also have time to look left, skimming my gaze along the front façade of Pac Central to rest on the cranes beyond…

which mark a New Build worthy of those capital letters: the new St.Paul’s Hospital complex.

Lights change. I cross, I walk, and I pivot around this elegant lamp post shadow at the far train station corner…

to see…

the bulk of the new hospital, now showing us its full dimensions and scale.

One peek at an explanatory billboard, visible through a gap in the fencing…

and I right-turn to follow a pathway to Gate 4, which runs along the far side of the complex.

East side of the building to my left, Trillium Park to my right, and straight ahead — over there in North Van, the far side of Burrard Inlet — snow on the mountain peaks. Plus, you bet, warmly dressed skiers.

Down here at sea level, the Trillium Park soccer players are lightly dressed…

and even I have bare hands and an open jacket.

One last glance at the hospital complex through playground equipment in spiffed-up Trillium Park…

one last salute to all that high-altitude sparkling snow…

and I carry on north & west into Strathcona, heading for Main Street the other side of Chinatown.

My zigzag takes me between two very modest apartment complexes. I’m thinking they’re a bit on the grim side, then slap myself for snobbery. Whatever their aesthetics, they are clean & tidy & details like paint and windows look well-maintained.

But that’s not why I’m showing you this photo. After you pass (or don’t pass) your own judgment on the aesthetics, please note the black blob on the ledge between the centre balcony and the open window.

See it?

It is not a blob.

It is a cat.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight — or so I thought — of a cat tumbling out that open window, surely to his death. He does not die. He lands on the ledge. I stand there, waiting for him to start wailing for help. He does not wail. He settles down, toes curled over the front of the ledge, and does what he clearly does on a regular basis. He fills his lungs with fresh outdoors air, and watches the world go by.

I salute him with great respect. He ignores me.

I walk on.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 10 January 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 10 January 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/10/new-moss-new-builds-new-snow-a-very-calm-cat/

Forward! In Reverse

1 January 2026 – Well, it is forward, isn’t it, when the reverse of your usual choice offers a new way to look at things. It’s hardly a major life breakthrough, but it does qualify as a pleasing little experiment, and worthy of the first day of a new year.

My “little experiment” is to walk the Burrard Inlet Seawall east-to-west between Waterfront Station and Stanley Park, instead of west-to-east. I know: small stuff indeed. But the fog is burning off, and it isn’t raining, and the temperature is comfortably above zero. Good reasons to drop off a bus at Waterfront Station, and get myself down to the water by Canada Place.

Tourists and locals stroll; the sights present themselves for admiration:

the fabric roof “sails” of Canada Place, the rental bicycles, a SeaBus completing its run from North Vancouver, a laden freighter and, of course, the orange cranes that tend to the freighters.

After that, my eye seems to focus more on slivers of scenes, not the whole panorama.

The tip of The Drop, the 2008 sculpture in Bon Voyage Plaza by the German four-artist collective Inges Idee that honours our temperate rainforest status with one elegant raindrop…

Doug Taylor’s kinetic weathervane Wind Wheel Mobile just west of the Convention Centre, which, from this angle, resembles a bobbing duck more than a weathervane…

Seawall bike lanes bordering the west side of Harbour Green Park, under a russet canopy of (I think!) winter beech leaves…

and the merest ghost of the sun, glimmering through the fog between buildings at the top of a Coal Harbour Park staircase.

I spend a moment with Santa’s floating gift “To YOU” in the Coal Harbour marinas.

Really a lavish Christmas present? Or, wait a minute, a clever-boots For Sale sign? The suspiciously generic label bears the M&P Yacht Centre logo, after all.

Far (west) end of the marinas, and I pause again, this time for something I feel no need to interpret.

A red cube sticker + a vee of water. I just like it.

Then the brass curve of the Coal Harbour Fellowship Bell (commemorating the companies and people of the “self-contained industrial marine community” that, 1891-1979, populated this area)…

and then more red, and another curve. This time red bobbing in the water, not fixed above it, and in a sinuous horizontal arc, not vertical.

A bit more hoofing along, and, finally, I am here.

I am exactly where the map says I am: on the Seawall at the east end of Devonian Harbour Park, in turn a gateway to Stanley Park, and also the end of my route from Waterfront Station, down there in blue/white signage at the bottom of the map.

Time for me to follow the snake fence through the park…

pause to take group pictures for some happy tourists, then….

cross this little bridge, and angle up along the creek to those cranes and new-builds on West Georgia.

Where I hop on a trusty #19, and ride my way home.

(Happy New Year, everyone! I so appreciate your interest and generous good humour.)

3 Comments
by icelandpenny on 1 January 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 1 January 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/01/01/forward-in-reverse/

Light Travel and Time Travel (and the Flick of a Cat Tail)

29 December 2025 – It starts with a cat, not that the feline has any connection with our reasons for being on East 6th and poised to head north on Quebec.

But who could resist? I promise myself I’ll pursue that code once I’m home.

Meanwhile, on we go. On down Quebec St. to the water. We are en route the Village dock, about to make a two-ferry trip all the way west to the Maritime Museum dock.

Our goal isn’t even the Maritime Museum. Ferries are just the most delightful way to get ourselves to the Museum of Vancouver, out there in Vanier Park, for their twin exhibitions about chairs: Deep-Seated Histories (old chairs in their collection) and Future Makers (new chairs by Kwantlen Polytech students).

Light travel — reflections across the water — captures us before we even leave our home dock. Copper light, rippling its way south across the water.

Light travel + time travel: Jerry Pethick’s Time Top sculpture sends its own ripples southward as we pass the Cambie Bridge.

From one ferry to another at Granville Market, and soon we dock at the Maritime Museum — a free outdoor exhibit of vintage wooden vessels. And, not incidentally, home to the non-profit Oarlock & Sail Wooden Boat Club, housed in the floating Wooden Boat Shop.

More light travel, shimmering among the aged vessels (many wrapped against winter, but alas therefore incognito as well).

From light travel, back to time travel.

Barni-cycle!

It didn’t collect all those barnacles in just a day or two.

I add an extra layer of time travel + distance travel.

I bounce myself back years and back east to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s display of Simon Starling’s Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore). It shows what happens when first you make a faithful copy of Henry Moore’s Warrior With Shield, then you place it in Lake Ontario as an offering to zebra mussels for a few years, and finally haul it up again for display.

I shake that image out of my head, rejoin present time & place, and follow my friend to the MOV, where we meet another friend and all three of us go look at chairs.

They are twinned exhibits. First, as seen above, Deep-Seated Histories of vintage chairs with local connections. But even here I’m back to light travel. No longer light crossing water to create reflections; instead, light crossing air to create shadows.

(Above) Edward’s Razor Repair Shop Metal Chair, 1930; and (below) Peter’s ice Cream Parlour Stool, c. 1930.

Later, in the Future Makers exhibit, more light travel, more shadows.

This time, beneath the Kuma Chair, in homage to Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and the outside lobby of his Alberni building here in Vancouver. The chair, its signage tells us, explores negative space. I see shadows.

And then more walk-abouts, and then lunch at the splendid Melo Pâtisserie, and then home.

Where I look up the code for that cat show. And discover it took place on 25 August 2025.

More time travel!

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 29 December 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 29 December 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/12/29/light-travel-and-time-travel-and-the-flick-of-a-cat-tail/

Windy & Wet

18 December 2025 – Just a description, mind you, not a complaint. Compared to weather almost everywhere else in the country, including here in BC, Vancouver’s weather is a walk in the park.

But even so, it is still very windy and very wet!

Just look at the air vents blown horizontal in the sodden construction fence fabric, as I splosh my way along West 10th this morning.

By the combined might of word + weather association, I start thinking about anapest metre.

Why? Because wet weather on 8 December caused me to rewrite a limerick to fit, and that in turn caused me to discover the anapest metre and its (quote-unquote) “galloping rhythm.”

So here I am, in yet more wet & windy weather. To distract myself, I compose a limerick. An ode to the anapest metre.

(More throat-clearing)

The anapest metre is now my best friend,

It offers me rhythm without any end,

I gallop and giggle,

I wobble and wiggle.

It distracts me from rain and that’s a great trend!

Once home… and dry… I look up “anapest metre” online. The Poetry Foundation explains it consists of two unaccented syllables followed by one accented syllable, and then helpfully gives two examples of words that — all by themselves! — are anapestic: “underfoot” and “overcome.”

Yah well, here’s the Canadian example: “Newfoundland.”

From now on, let’s all pronounce it correctly.

Finally! A new year’s resolution we can keep.

1 Comment
by icelandpenny on 18 December 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 18 December 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/12/18/windy-wet/

Present / Future Parks; Very Present Rain

25 November 2025 – In my bit of the Northern Hemisphere, November means lots of rain…

and seasonal criteria for “awesome.”

This year-round sign on the allotment fence in Tea Swamp Park invites us to adapt our eye, and enjoy what’s currently on offer. Rusty old leaves, for example, still clothing this shrub…

and shameless bare-naked deciduous trees…

dancing around in their bones.

Walking back north on Main, I pass a trio of parks-in-the-making.

A “permanent plaza” under construction, here at Main & 12th (yes folks, your tax dollars at work)…

with gravel being industriously moved from Here to There.

Farther north, the site at Broadway & Main that had lain razed and desolate behind mesh fencing ever since a triple-alarm fire gutted its buildings…

is now fence-free and adorned with bright, shiny-wet picnic tables.

Plus a smidge of new landscaping, along the southern edge.

I’m still thinking about that slightly surreal tableau when — crossing 7th & Main — I see something even more surreal:

No, not the mural, not Slim’s BBQ — the snowplow! What? A bright yellow snowplow fitted to the front of the truck behind that white car. Ready to take on the snow. In the rain.

One more future-park. With more tax-dollar signage.

Like the one down the street, it’s early stage, mostly gravel and hints of Things To Come, narrowly visible through fence post gaps.

I take advantage of the building opposite, for the roof-top perspective.

The rain, here in Rain City, blurs the view but the view still rewards the trip.

And that is quite enough rain! I retreat.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 25 November 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 25 November 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/11/25/present-future-parks-very-present-rain/

On The Way to Art

16 November 2026 – I have a plan. Take the #19 bus; get off at Granville; walk south a few blocks; visit two art galleries.

But then I get on the wrong bus, and things do not go according to plan.

Two different bus routes come ’round the corner, you see, and I don’t bother reading the signage before I jump aboard. I settle back, ready to indulge in city-watching until we reach the #19’s Granville stop. Except… we don’t. The bus turns north well before Granville and ends its run at Waterfront Station.

Which is exactly what the #8 is supposed to do.

More than a little sheepish, I step down and rethink my route. I’m still within easy reach of my first target, the VAG (Vancouver Art Gallery); I’m just approaching it from a different angle — an angle that, with a couple of zig-zags, finds me heading south on Howe Street, between West Pender and Dunsmuir.

Where — eyes right — I see this alley, bouncing its colours in every direction.

Look at all those rectangles! And the polka-dots! (Which splash their reflections all over the adjacent white van.)

The alley pulls me in, how could it not? Happy rectangles to the south; happy circles to the north…

forming still-life tableaux with delivery trucks and doorway tubing.

Splatters on the pavement. Yellow…

and red…

and, here at the Hornby end of the block, bright blue. Further adorned with russet leaves.

I’m well-pleased with my wrong-bus start to the day. It fed me into this alley, handed me all this unexpected art while on my way to expected art.

There’s one more hit of the unexpected yet to come. I find it in the plaza just east of the VAG.

Lanterns.

All the forms in these lanterns, says the signage for Lux Memoriae (Tidal Reflections) by Ari Lazer, come from the tidal contours of the Fraser River.

This theme ties perfectly, and I am sure deliberately, with the VAG exhibition I have come to see: We who have known tides . Drawn from the VAG’s permanent collection of art by indigenous artists, all of the works in some way reference life interwoven with ocean and tide.

A spill of abalone shells (I am turning towards tides, winds, clouds, rainfall, by Tanya Lukin Linklater), for example, burnished and positioned on a tarp…

and, on the far wall, four pieces of found cedar (Longing, by Sonny Assu)…

all end cuts, and each selected for its resemblance to a mask.

I do not visit other floors, other exhibitions. I take myself a little farther south on Howe, for the Our French Connection show at Outsiders and Others.

This is a different art world entirely, in a gallery focused on contemporary work by self-taught and non-traditional artists. There is great diversity of styles, materials and objects — but every piece pulses with the outsider energy of the person who created it. I’m always engaged, when I visit this gallery, a-buzz with what surrounds me.

And, almost always, before I get to the art I have a bit of a chin-wag with Yuri Arajs, the gallery’s Artistic Director and Curator. Today I pull out my phone, show him the alley I discovered en route.

He plucks the phone from my hand, walks over to the wall, and holds this image I took of the alley in Vancouver…

next to this pen-on-paper Star Car, drawn by Dominique Lemoine in France.

We shake heads at each other and laugh. Art is all over the place! Inside, outside, in galleries, in alleys, bursting 360° through human demographics & world geography, discovered by intention or just by climbing on the wrong bus.

Pleased with that thought, I reclaim my phone and turn my attention to the show.

(Which I urge you to do as well, should you be in Vancouver this month.)

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 16 November 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, photography, street art, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 16 November 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/11/16/on-the-way-to-art/

Five Stones

11 November 2025 – A story balanced on five stones in the water — and a much happier story than the one painted in 11 words on that alley shed door, in my previous post.

It’s a bright fall day. We are hoofing our way along the False Creek Seawall, no end point in mind, just the pleasure of hoofing along.

Then we stop in amazement, to stare at the stepping stones out to Habitat Island.

Usually, practically always, the stones look like the way they look in this Parks Board photo:

a spine of bone-dry vertebrae, on a mounded bed of gravel that, even at high tide, still offers a narrow path for those who’d rather not hop the stones.

Ahh, but, this day is not at all as-usual.

This day follows the super moon (Beaver Moon) of November 5, and therefore it offers us a super tide.

Like this:

We watch, fascinated, as the living beings on five of those stones — human and canine both — make their Go? Stay? decisions.

Fixed stones, active stories.

Left to right:

  • on stone # 1 – Red Slacks waits, while…
  • on stone # 2 – Small Dog hesitates, not at all sure he wants to leap to…
  • stone # 3 – where Dad / Baby Duo look toward…
  • stone # 4 – where Reluctant Toddler turns away from…
  • stone # 5 – where Loving Mum is tugging his hand and try to coax him forward.

And, all around, the larger context: marine vessels (False Creek ferry, private boat, kayaks); a couple of people already log-lounging out on the island; and even a soaring gull.

It all works out. Small Dog makes the jump; Reluctant Toddler finally trusts Loving Mum; and Red Slacks is rewarded for her patience. Everybody makes it to the island.

We, on the other hand, keep walking the Seawall instead, and end up on Granville Island. Where we do our own prowling for a bit, and then ride a ferry all the way back east.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 11 November 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 11 November 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/11/11/five-stones/

Echoes in the Alley

9 November 2025 – Another downtown alley, another grimy shed in a downtown alley, the usual casual scrawls and scars.

Amidst all that, I suddenly realize, eleven neatly lettered words.

Echoes of old strife, rage, pain and loss.

Echoes, also, of love and enduring hope for another chance.

5 Comments
by icelandpenny on 9 November 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 9 November 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/11/09/echoes-in-the-alley/

Choices

3 November 2025 – Either/or choices, within a block of each other.

A battered Mother Jones slogan, supported by battered crows, urges us…

to raise hell.

A tidy Lutheran Church signboard urges us…

to practice gratitude.

What to do, what to do?

Easy.

Life is both/and.

Do both.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 3 November 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City Walks, photography, street art, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 3 November 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/11/03/choices/

Strolling With Confidence

26 October 2025 – A double pun, both parts inspired by what I see, this drizzle-rich day, at the VanDusen Botanical Garden.

One part, the Michael Dennis cedar sculptures visible from the forecourt, which I always enjoy…

but whose title I always forget. I have to read it anew each visit: Confidence, says the label, Western red cedar, 2012.

Truth to tell, I don’t quite understand this title.

Dennis’ cedar sculpture for Guelph Park was called Reclining Figure, a name that made obvious sense — though also a name that disappeared from popular memory when the piece was recast in bronze, nicknamed The Dude, and in turn caused the park itself to become known as Dude Chilling Park. (But that is another story, and one I’ve already told you.)

To me, this Van Dusen duo look more contemplative than confident. Pffft, who cares? Confidence is an admirable characteristic, so let’s run with it. Confidence in my outerwear to be as waterproof as it claims, for example… confidence in nature’s transitions each season… confidence in the bones and installations of this Garden to be of interest, whatever the season, whatever the weather.

Confidence immediately justified. This is what greets me, as I start northward along the west side of Livingstone Lake.

Contrasts in the slopes to my left, fall textures and colours at play against the deep green of the coniferous background.

Sculptural details, in seed pods I can’t identify…

and in a curious fall fruit that I can, namely the Common Medlar (Mespilus germanica).

Then, just before I reach the footbridge that divides Livingstone Lake from Heron Lake, I see this enormous leaf on the ground before me.

Which I can also identify, and which sets me looking for more.

This is a Gunnera leaf — Gunnera manicata, aka Giant Chilean Rhubarb, and worthy of the adjective. One leaf can be a couple of metres wide, clumps run 3-plus metres high and 3-4 metres across. There are great clusters of this plant around the inter-zone of these two lakes.

The plant towers over visitors all summer long.

In fall, it is cut back…

and its leaves inverted, to protect plant crowns from winter temperatures.

I’m properly awed by Gunnera in summer, I giggle at it in winter.

Giant pixie caps!

I’m across the foot bridge now, looking north into Heron Lake, taking in the whole sweep of autumn complexity, from desiccated russet stalks at my feet to flaming trees in the distance. So rich.

Also, in places, so denuded.

I follow the sweep of this dug-over flower bed, past that uprooted tree, and come to a signpost that promises me the most extraordinary amount of choice: both seasonal and geographic.

Here’s where the other part of my punning post title kicks in. I am offered a stroll, and I take it. Specifically, at this point, an autumn stroll in Eastern North America.

Yes. It is very all-of-that.

A side trail loops me past the Cypress Pond, and brings me out once again to the south-east curve of Livingstone Lake.

Where I rejoin the Confidence couple.

I too have confidence — confidence they watch over their lake, just as The Dude watches over his park.

I take my leave.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 26 October 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 26 October 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/10/26/strolling-with-confidence/

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