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.
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.
26 April 2026 – Not a real elephant. But play along with me on this, will you? Imagine the side view of an elephant’s head — one with an unusually large eye and an unfortunately short and lumpy trunk.
Now look at this map of Stanley Park.
I hope you’re laughing.
It’s a bright, mild, breezy day, and I am about to walk the Seawall right ’round the elephant’s head, starting at the black-starred “0 KM” marker at the base of his thick neck, down there to the right of Lost Lagoon.
Signs remind us to play nicely with the other children.
Halfway along the underside of that lumpy trunk, I take a picture of the seabed exposed by low tide…
and hear a puzzled little voice behind me ask, “Daddy, where’s the water?” Daddy meets the challenge: with child-appropriate vocabulary and to child-appropriate length, he explains the concept of tides. “Oh!” she cries, very pleased. We all move on.
I pass HMCS Discovery, out there on the Deadman’s Island military reserve, admiring both its own dignity and, to the left, the silhouette of the Convention Centre roof-top “sails.”
Soon after, I notice something else — first a diver-below warning flag out in the water, and then the diver herself at water’s edge, working with a colleague to hand her oxygen tank up to waiting hands above.
I ask; she explains: routine monitoring of the kelp beds. She grins at my next question. “Yes,” she says, “they look healthy.”
A float plane flies still-low over the water, snarling its way into the sky.
Later, in the photo, I see that bird upper left, already soaring high. Silently.
Soon I’m at Brockton Point, the tip of the elephant’s stubby trunk. Across Burrard Inlet, gleaming piles of yellow sulphur in the Port’s North Vancouver terminals…
and at my feet a plaque reminding me that while the sulphur (from Alberta) is the visually dramatic export, those terminals handle so much more — including millions of tons of potash (Saskatchewan), coal (BC), petroleum products and concentrates, all brought here for export to six continents.
I’m now walking the upper side of the trunk, all along Burrard Inlet. I pause a moment, mesmerized for once not by natural phenomena but by a cultural phenomenon of our times. I watch a couple of intense young podcasters as they set up their next production.
Red Shirt is rehearsing her lines, fists clenched for emphasis; Black Shirt is twiddling and re-twiddling her hair. A moment later they are posed before the camera, about to emote, their lips carefully stretched far enough to approximate smiles but not far enough to (gasp) cause any wrinkles.
As I move on, sternly reminding myself not to judge, I overhear a woman’s remark to her male companion as they walk the other way. She is, or is not, passing judgment. You decide. “I really admire your ambition and your determination, but sometimes… sometimes it’s OK to slow down.” I don’t hear his reply.
I see Lumberman’s Arch to my left, don’t veer inland to revisit it. Soon after, I stop for a modest little sundial, currently benefiting from all the sun it needs to do its job.
I have to wait my turn: a guy in a Blue Jays cap is checking the sundial against his watch. “It’s an hour out,” he announces. Then he wags a finger to withdraw that remark, and we both laugh. “Yeah,” I say. “It’s on nature’s time, not on daylight-saving.” He walks on, I take a photo and, since there’s no way to avoid shadows, I decide to make them a feature.
I am being kinder to this sundial than is the North American Sundial Society, which puts technical expertise behind its conclusion that this “once very beautiful” sundial is now in “poor condition.”
As I work my way toward the top of the elephant’s head, I get frequent glimpses of Lion’s Gate Bridge, each one a little closer.
And, then, I’m right under it.
So much ocean, out there on my right-hand side. It’s easy to forget there is also so much forest on my left-hand side.
At 400 hectares (about 1,000 acres), Stanley Park is some 20% larger than Central Park in NYC.
I’m now past Prospect Point, starting down the back side of the elephant’s head along English Bay. Mostly shade, and breezy. Some dramatic hits of sunshine slicing through…
but mostly, visuals be damned! It’s just a chilly reminder of the difference sunshine vs shade makes to ambient temperature.
I pass Siwash Rock, an ancient sea stack and an important cultural site for the Coast Salish peoples, noticing both the rock and the line of freighters behind it, out there in the Port Authority’s parking lot.
It’s only as I pass beside the rock that I notice that the Douglas fir on top appears dead — and it’s only back home, later, I learn that the tree has already been replaced several times in the past dozen years or so, a victim to storms.
Third Beach! I’m mid-way down the back of the elephant’s head.
A short off-ramp leads to some food stalls, already open for business. It’s a popular refueling point for walkers & cyclists, and I join them. A bit later, happy and re-energized, I drop back down to the Seawall, with a backward, grateful glance up to those red umbrellas and all that they offer.
Just to add to my pleasure: a Great Blue Heron, close to shore.
Everyone stops to admire. Even the chatter-boxes fall silent. One man mouths “Beautiful!” at me and we nod at each other.
Somewhere between Third and Second beaches, I share a bench with the spirit of (so says the plaque) one Henri Félix Bonay. I count 15 freighters, out there in the parking lot.
It’s an impressive number, but not as impressive as the number attached to M. Bonay. According to dates on the plaque, he lived to 103.
Curve upon curve in the Seawall, vista upon vista. I am now beyond Second Beach, with its open-air swimming pool, well down the English Bay side of the elephant’s thick neck. I look back, this time following my ears not my feet.
Salsa music! Somewhere out there, on one of those freighters, it’s party time. Or perhaps it’s chore time, but with music to make the work more agreeable.
I see city streets above me. I’m about to leave Stanley Park for the ribbon of English Bay Beach Park…
its sands on view to the right of this map.
Good-bye, elephant.
I cross over to Morton Park, spend a few moments with the lads of A-Maze-ing Laughter...
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!
31 March 2026 – Good grief, I sound like an infomercial. But what’s a girl to do? There I was, after posting Old & New, minding my own business, waiting for a #99 at Ontario & Broadway.
Just across the corner, I see this:
What?? I investigate.
A whole new, and agreeably perplexing, category for Old & New.
Very old stop sign, its official cap long gone, plus, up there on top, a very new burst of mystery greenery.
Nothing special about either the stop sign or the greenery, except the combination of the two.
What knocked the official top-of-sign off the sign? What then deposited enough city grit & grime in the sign pole to form a growing medium? How long did it take? What then (wind, bird, Act of God) deposited mystery seeds — plink!!! — so precisely into that growing medium? When did that happen?
We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter.
We can just take it as it comes. A mystery gift from the city, to us.
"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 