18 August 2026 – Every now and then, I challenge myself to live up to the Marcel Proust quote on my home page: “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” What a concept! It is within our own power, to make the “old” endlessly new.
I decide to walk myself north along a very familiar stretch of Main Street — with new eyes. I start at 30th Avenue.
I am almost immediately rewarded with Kissing Crows.
I love everything about this sign: hand-lettered, informative, friendly, giving good reasons please to honour the request.
The cycle shop’s storefront, right next door, is very classy, very handsome…
but I still love the laneway notice best.
Slight deviation at East 28th. A few steps eastward, to enjoy the north/south contrast either side of the avenue.
On the north: a grotty old, environmentally-worthy old, recycling depot. Thank you, Joe.
On the south: the cool elegance of Mercurial Boutique Clothing, with its “curated” (I quote) collections.
I check a few price tags, out here on the sidewalk, and quietly slink away.
Back to Main Street!
All the happy combinations on offer, up and down Main: not just of what to buy/eat/do, but of choices within each category, often in the same location.
Here, for example, you can drink draft beer or, if you’d rather, Vietnamese coffee. (Or a fresh avocado smoothie.)
Happy customers inside, choosing their favourites; happy woman outside, scrolling her phone as she walks.
There is ramen…
there are records…
and there’s the reminder of a late-summer sale.
There are animals — to inform us, to amuse us, to loosen our purse strings.
The tattoo parlour skunk…
the fitness studio ants…
the welcoming Maneki Neko cats…
and the welcoming dachshund.
People linger, this pleasant summer afternoon.
They linger over everything from sidewalk books…
to a sidewalk coffee (which he is enjoying with his own hardcover book, thank you very much).
I almost linger myself right through this doorway…
because the Regional Assembly of Text is one of my favourite places in the whole city. Run by two Emily Carr University grads, it offers a whole world of everything relating to print and text, some vintage, some current, much of it locally made.
But I don’t fall through the door.
Instead, I find myself nipping eastward ’round the next corner. My new eyes are having a good time, but my old ears suddenly don’t want all the noise of an urban main artery.
Once off Main Street — just like that — my new eyes and my old ears are both equally happy.
13 August 2026 – An escaped balloon gets me thinking about “benign neglect.”
This is not what caused US political advisor Daniel Moynihan to coin the phrase, back in 1970. In a memo to then-President Richard Nixon, he suggested that the issue of race relations “could benefit from a period of benign neglect.” Not surprisingly, it was controversial, and is still argued today — both his own good/bad faith intentions, and the consequences over time.
My mind is not there. My mind is on this blue balloon.
I am at the corner of Pine and West 6th, early for an appointment and therefore with time to kill. What better than a bit of a bimble into the Arbutus Greenway? That’s the plan, but then, as I’m about to cross Pine and enter the Greenway, I look north on Pine and get distracted by a blue balloon.
OK, first I am distracted by the double hit of blue: car plus balloon. Then I focus on the balloon. And then I focus on what is all around it — the happy eco-consequences, for this street corner, of human neglect.
I start to explore. I’m smiling at everything, even though I can’t identify any of it.
Not entirely true. I can identify a bee when I see one, and I am seeing a great many.
Like this guy, dragging down one of these bright orange flowers.
A late-summer abundance of shaggy growth. There is cool green-&-silver elegance to be had…
and also the hot flamboyance of magenta.
I turn my back on Ms Flamboyance, and notice that there is a degree of human intervention after all: a picnic table and benches.
Severely functional — weathered planks atop metal grids filled with rubble — but also elegant. Designed. And, look, there’s a pathway, edged with the same design signature.
I follow the path out to the corner of Pine and West 5th where I see both a line of grubby concrete blocks and a weathered black plaque.
I read the plaque.
And it all makes sense. It’s a pollinator project in a pop-up park. By the look of it, the project was established some years ago, and since then has benefitted from human inaction. The benign consequences, for nature, of human neglect. Indeed, the plaque urges non-action upon us: “Do not disturb. Please don’t bug the pollinators…”
Later, at home, I read more. This street-corner project is a good decade old by now, and slated to be incorporated into a new park, Burrard Slopes. (On this 2016 Park Board map, it is still place-marked as “Future Park.”)
I am still too early for my appointment. I walk west on West 5th, back into the busyness of the city…
and very agreeably fill the last 15 minutes of spare time with a latte at Elysian Coffee, over on Burrard Street.
See the dog bowl, under the Elysian sign? Yrs Truly took in a near-empty bowl, waited for the barista to refill it, and returned the full bowl to the sidewalk.
Benign neglect has its place. So does benign activism.
9 August 2026 – Not “on the lam” as in, fleeing; “on the lam” as in, literally, on David Lam Park.
Even more literally, smack at the park’s north-east corner, at the Pacific & Drake intersection.
I’ve just come from a noon-hour flamenco performance in the Scotiabank Dance Centre (north of Emery Barnes Park, top of the map), and wandered my way south on ‘Drake, en route False Creek and a Seawall walk at least part-way home.
I do not carry straight on, into the park. I stop for this.
Wouldn’t you?
Politely waiting my turn behind E-Scooter Lady gives me time to decide what to buy. I am limited, not by inclination but by space in my mini-backpack. I weigh options. I am judicious.
Mini-backpack now bulging with corn and cherries, I step into the park.
My eye skitters right past the green field; I’m already mentally down there at the silver ribbon, down there at False Creek. I vaguely register something-or-other going on mid-field… but who cares?
Silly me. The something-or-other deserves attention.
By the time I’m halfway down the path, my ear is beguiled by children’s laughter and, immediately after, my eye beguiled by a child-version “soccer” ball that comes bouncing to my feet. I give it a boot back towards the father who has come running to retrieve it. He’s all “Sorry!” and I’m all “No, it’s terrific!” and then I stand to watch for a bit.
Two men, one little boy, one little girl, and a whole lot of fun.
I later send the photo to my longtime soccer-coaching nephew, who replies: “Such a great age as they discover the joy of kicking and chasing the ball around!” What’s really great is that those adults are wise enough to let it be pure joy — yes, they give some tips, as the children race around, but it’s all warm voices, encouragement and cheers.
I’m barely again underway when I again stop. For this.
The ceramic mosaic, I later learn, is a 2002 community project facilitated by Leah Dexter and titled Watch Your Step. I obey. I watch and I also read. (I always read.) The encircling text is surprising, since it juxtaposes negative values (e.g. “panic,” “darkness,” “fear”) with positive (e.g “unity,” “awaken”).
One short sentence at the very top explains the mixture.
“This image represents the balance between struggle and growth we all share.”
The both/and of life. I am nodding agreement as I walk on.
The Seawall pathways display their own mix of both/and’s:
directions for pedestrians and cyclists, on that pole at the upper left, and dog-owner instructions, here at the lower right.
One last Lam-image, in the water and visible just above the sign, as I leave the park.
Can you see it? The metal arc spanning “David” to “Lam,” with a narrow cylinder shooting skyward on the right. It is another of the park’s art installations, this one called Brush With Illumination, by Buster Simpson (1998).
I walk on east, thinking how richly I have been rewarded by my brief time in this 4.34 Ha park:fresh local fruit &veggies, children playing their way into soccer skills, and art installations.
Much as I approve of public art, much as I appreciate the Okanagan bounty (cherries beside me as I write these words)… it is the kiddies’ squeals of laughter that please me most.
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.
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.
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.
14 June 2026 – How better to title a blog post being written as I roll toward the St. Lawrence River, than with words from a paddling song of early voyageurs?
And I am rolling along, on board VIA Rail. Just the latest phase of several days of travel, all on the surface, and running the gamut from ferry to bus to train.
Ferry!
The MV Madeleine II at dock in Souris, PEI, after our morning crossing from Cap-aux-Meules, Magdalen Islands. She’s 124 m. long, 6 decks high, can carry 750 passengers and 200 vehicles per trip, which in a year totals some 100,00 people and 41,000 vehicles.
I have time to learn this, also time to admire the red beaches besides the terminal…
because I have a four-hour wait before my local-route bus ride on up to the capital of PEI, Charlottetown.
Bus!
It all goes well. It is the start of my pleasure in the continuing presence of inter-community busses here in the Maritimes, something we used to enjoy elsewhere in Canada but no longer do.
Sunshine throughout the stay on the Magdalens, and now — gusty, drizzly rain.
I brave it for a morning walk to Victoria Park, then — hat and hood pulled tight around my head — turn back into town. My reward is this dramatic mural en route.
At 1 pm my next bus takes off, one that (via a connection) takes me off-island to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with a little slice of New Brunswick thrown into the mix.
Until 1997, the only way off-island was to fly or take a ferry. That year, a new option opened up. Thanks to the new Confederation Bridge, vehicles could now drive a 12.9 km. link across the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait between the island and New Brunswick.
We’re on the bridge. It is very foggy.
But eventually there it is: the New Brunswick shore.
We’re soon in Nova Scotia and, late afternoon, I drop off in Dartmouth, just short of the final stop, neighbouring Halifax. Next morning, I’m in Halifax, at the waterfront train station
Rail!
Not quite yet, I’ve 20 minutes to kill, so I walk a bit of the Halifax Harbour front.
It’s an important harbour, and I’ll let the signage concisely tell you why.
(Apologies if all this data causes you to resonate with the very cross little boy slapping down a very large book on the library Returns desk and complaining: “This book tells me a great deal more about penguins than I want to know!” On the other hand, I am not looking over your shoulder, so let your eyes skitter on down the page, if you wish.)
Still foggy, which somehow seems exactly the sort of weather we should be having…
… though perhaps lifting slightly. I can now, faintly, make out the lighthouse on the little island directly ahead of us.
Time to catch my train. It runs a route now named The Atlantic, but which began in 1904 as the Ocean line. That date, I later learn, makes this the longest continuous-service passenger service in North America.
I’ll be going almost all the way…
getting off in Ste-Foy for the short connecting ride to Quebec City.
Did you notice that use of the present progressive tense? (“I’ll be going…”) Yes, my friends, as promised above, I am still on board, swaying gently with the train’s motion as I type this post in the WiFi service car.
We have just pulled out of Moncton (consult your map, above)…
and I think I’ll say good-bye. I want to spend my time falling into the passing landscape.
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.
"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 