25 June 2025 – Doesn’t that sound technical, inert & boring? Even when you learn casters are rotating support systems mounted in swivel frames & used for movement?
Well, yes, is the only honest answer.
Until you see what’s moving.
First one circle of light floats across the bottom floor…
until it stubs its photons on the far wall, and begins to climb.
Up it goes, sliding up that staircase…
to gain a toe-hold, right there under the next-floor archway.
It leaps up-over the arch, and it is still climbing…
as a playmate begins its own exploration, back down at the bottom.
The newcomer opts for the near side of the staircase, while that first circle soars ever higher…
and spectators watch spellbound from the rotunda’s top floor…
unaware they’re being stalked by yet another circle, sneaking up on them from the left.
Would you prefer a less anthropomorphic explanation? Oh, all right.
19 June 2025 – Forget the dragon. That is so 10 centuries ago! These days, St. George — or, anyway, our St. George — is all about urban/eco sustainability and livability.
I’m first bounced onto this theme by a graffito on a waste bin. One that I initially think disrespectful of the human origins of the slogan…
but then reconsider, as I look smack across the street.
I’m on East 7th, heading farther east, and I’m staring into the busy abundance of this community garden stretching on north to East 6th. All lives matter, yes? We humans and plants are woven into the same eco-system.
This little local garden is very much of this neighbourhood, with its neighbourly values. A place with low-rise homes, many of them vintage wooden structures; a place where a kicked-off toddler’s shoe…
is carefully displayed at sidewalk’s edge by some later passer-by, in the hopes it may yet be retrieved.
I drop down to East 6th, look north as I cross Guelph, think how much I like this human scale — but have no illusions it will last much longer. Let your eye travel down the row of modest bright-painted houses…
to that equally bright-painted construction crane down below. That’s the future, and increasingly the present.
But!
St. George is at work.
Well, the St. George Rainway. It’s been a long time coming, but now here it is, nearing completion — with its (and I quote} “green rainwater infrastructure features like rain gardens that incorporate plants, trees and soil to manage rainwater…”
I step up to the mini-plaza with its rock, its signage mounted on a plinth…
adorned with a Wood Sorrel cut-out…
and lots of information.
Go ahead — spread the image, track its elements; I’ll wait.
Together, we learn that the Rainway along St. George celebrates a Lost Creek, a tributary to False Creek that has long since been buried underground. (For that matter, this final eastern end of False Creek, into which the lost creek ran, no longer exists either.)
While you’re exploring that handy map, please note not just the Lost Creek, left-above “You are here,” but also China Creek on the far right, and E. Broadway (East Broadway), three streets to the south.
I admire the rain garden that parallels the sidewalk immediately to the south …
then cross East 6th to admire this sign in the rain garden running on north…
and feel more vindicated than ever in making my peace with the “Plant lives matter” graffito. “Thriving in diverse communities” sounds like the prescription for healthy life, period, whatever form of life we happen to be.
You’ll understand why, with that thought fresh in mind, I fall over laughing at the dumpster graffito I see immediately afterwards.
On I go, on to China Creek North Park. (See? That’s why I wanted you to locate it on the map.)
I am heartened, as I approach the edge of this large park, to see fresh new vine fencing woven into the woodlands periphery. (It had become very scruffy.)
At first, looking down the slope, the basin of the park appears generic and banal. Old fashioned, even.
All that mown grass. And baseball diamonds.
But then, as always, I reconsider. The top of the slope is lined with benches, and they are well used, in diverse ways. At the moment, for example, the bench on the left hosts Headset Guy, who in fact is reading a real, physical book…
while the bench on the right hosts Music Man, who strums his acoustic guitar so softly it is almost subliminal. A woman just out of frame is hunkered down, motionless & meditative, and the woman you can see walking past the benches is about to start down the winding path that snakes its way to the playground at the lower level.
And I am about to join her.
This park is another “Lost Creek” — or, more precisely, a Lost Watershed. Before this last bit of False Creek was filled in, a whole network of creeks tumbled through here to feed its waters. Once filled in, the area at one point became a garbage dump, but was subsequently rescued and turned into parkland.
The slope is now naturalized, and it is wonderfully, exuberantly, messy.
With signage to justify the mess.
At the bottom of the path, I peer down the final bit of slope, the bit with a slide and (here) a mesh climbing ladder…
and, down there at the very bottom-bottom, swings and a pirate’s ship and other kiddy delights.
All this diversity! Social plants, social humans, thriving in diversity.
Walking homeward, more happy plant/human interaction…
in this volunteer-managed street corner garden, part of the City’s Green Streets Program.
And then… a reminder that not everything is happy-happy.
That some current trends are jarring and disruptive, and will damage both humans and nature.
Taped to a tree on quiet, residential East 10th just west of St. George — with its fellow trees all around — a warning about the effects of the redevelopment now being pursued under the City’s Broadway Plan.
I may know more about the correct use of apostrophes (i.e., not to form noun plurals) than the author of this plea, but these tenants, in the adjoining notice…
teach me a new word. “Demoviction.” As in, the eviction of tenants from a building, so that it may be demolished, usually for redevelopment. A phenomenon integral to the Broadway Plan. And gaining pace.
I read a testimonial, also taped to the tree, the words of a woman who has been a tenant here for 22 years: “This affordable home allowed me to continue to raise my daughter here after my husband passed away. It provided a safe community and a stable, comfortable home.”
Right next door, the specific redevelopment being proposed: Rezone from Residential to Comprehensive Development category, and, on this street of two-storey homes, put up a 17-storey tower.
Hmm. Used to be, dragons breathed fire and wore scales. Now they may instead breathe rezoning, and clad themselves in 17 storeys.
13 June 2025 – It is all very tidy — you’ll see 13 photos, and this is June 13th — but it is not at all what I thought I was going to do. I had a theme, and then I had another theme, and then it all got away from me.
As tends to happen.
(Not that it matters.)
The first theme announces itself as I walk down Quebec St. toward False Creek, and look eastward into the alley.
Perfect! One photo, a cutesy post title — something like “X’s and Oh!” perhaps? — and I’m done.
Then I see this.
OK! Two images, street theme, call the post “On the Street” — and I’m done.
Then, crossing the Science World parking lot just off the end of False Creek, I see this tired but happy paddle-boarder telling a friend her adventure before packing up.
Three images. But still OK, the Street theme holds.
Ah, but next, heading west along False Creek, I am seduced (not for the first time) by the magic transformation of an ordinary apartment building when it bounces off the mirrored, textured surface of Parq Casino.
My theme promptly morphs from “street” to “surface.” Any thing or any living creature, I decide, on any surface, horizontal or vertical. Suddenly, everything that interest me… qualifies.
One dragon boat and two Aquabus ferries, out there on the surface of the water.
Mussel shells on the Seawall cobblestones, just past Cambie Bridge. (What’s left after a crow hurls a mussel from a great height onto a hard surface, then swoops down to eat the contents exposed to him when the shell splits upon impact.)
Up on Cambie Bridge, the fourth annual Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men, Boys and Two Spirit People Memorial March.
Back under Cambie Bridge, blue rings on the surface of bridge pillars, marking what a 5-metre rise in sea levels will look like, plus paddlers on the water. Plus a crow, swooping through on the surface of the air.
A generous message painted on the back surface of this bench facing Habitat Island: “I love the strange people I don’t know.”
Vivid new growth, on the trunk of this conifer.
Two mutilated crow posters on an Ontario-Street utility box which, between them, almost add up to one complete crow.
My favourite enigmatic Street-Art Girl, a little battered by now (and aren’t we all), but still visible on the wall of that building overlooking the parking lot just off Ontario and 3rd Avenue.
And finally… my favourite birds nest, perched on the surface of this alley fence post, again just off Ontario Street but by this time between East 6th & 7th, as I head for home.
I am still planning a post title to fit my “surface” theme.
Until I count how many photos I’ve chosen, and see they total thirteen. On the 13th of June.
I know an act of force majeure when I meet one. I obey.
7 June 2025 – Having walked down Heather Street, right to the False Creek Seawall, I am — not surprisingly — at the Heather Civic Marina. Which — also not surprisingly — is full of gently rocking boats.
I am not interested in the boats. I look left, where my feet will next take me…
and my mind bounces off most of what I see. Bounces off the low tide, the prow of a boat, the Seawall pathway, the bench in the bend of that pathway, and the collection of blue café umbrellas in Leg in Boot Square just ahead. My mind lands squarely on all that rock.
That sloping expanse of rock.
Riprap!
I grin at the rocks, mouthing the word.
I am surely influenced by Ana’s recent posts in her Anvica’s Gallery blog, in which she pays tribute to Wonderful Words. Most recently, to “ababol” — local slang, in her part of Spain, for “poppy.” She knows the correct Spanish for “poppy” is “amapola,” but she prefers “ababol.” Why? “It’s more fun.”
That’s my attitude to “riprap.” The fun you can have, with those two short syllables! Roll the r’s (Rrrrip-rrrap). Or pop the p’s (Rippp! Rappp)!
For me, though, it’s more than the fun of word games. It’s time travel.
Like Colonel Aurelio Buendía, remembering the day his father took him to discover ice, so I stand here on the Seawall, remembering the day I learned the word “riprap.” I was typing up some handwritten notes for a friend, and dissolved in giggles at a word I couldn’t read but deciphered as something like… “riprap.” Well, it couldn’t be that, could it, that’s not a word. So I said rude things about his horrible handwriting. And he patiently explained the word and its application — loose rock placed so to prevent erosion and preserve structural integrity.
For example… along the maritime edge of the False Creek Seawall.
Though Aurelio Buendía got to discover ice, the memory only surfaced as he faced a firing squad. Now, in much happier circumstances, my memory & I set out to discover riprap as I continue my walk toward Granville Island.
Vegetation has already discovered the riprap. All those crevices, just waiting to host whatever might be blowing in the wind.
From tiny, tenacious growth I can’t identify…
to shrubs and tall spikes of aconite, escapees from planted gardens.
A crow forages, for whatever he might find…
and I, initially taking in yet another sweep of vegetation, suddenly notice a tiny turquoise medallion, set in the Seawall ledge.
Which leads me to other discoveries, this bright breezy day.
It is one more marker in the provincial Control Survey system, a database of coordinates, elevations & related information archived for public access & use. The word “survey” flips me into more time travel. Almost 100 years ago, my dad spent two university summers as part of a survey team paddling the rivers & lakes of northern Saskatchewan.
The Seawall itself invites time travel. At the appropriate spot, signage shows us the unobstructed 2017 view across the water and through the city, right up to The Lions (two iconic mountain peaks, now more often called The Twin Sisters). It is, the signage announces, a protected view.
And yes, today in 2025, there it still is.
Right at the eastern edge of Charleson Park, more signage. This one a warning.
I am bemused. Warning? Are the elderly armed & dangerous? As I play with this very entertaining possibility, I hear the sound of approaching cyclists and a happy voice cries, “Well! That looks good!” The voice belongs to the man pedalling a trishaw, with two elderly passengers on the seat in front of him. A second trishaw follows. Laughter all ’round.
No wonder they approve of the sign — Cycling Without Age is a Canadian charity whose volunteers take local seniors (and their families and friends) out for a spin.
From elderly to young, from sturdy trishaw to tiny bicycle: Polkadot Helmet Missy & I pause halfway through Charleson Park…
to watch a City maintenance man wait for his colleagues before attempting to yoick that heavy fence section out of the way.
More walking, more discoveries. Including the Charleson Park sign that reminds us the pretty pond behind it is a seasonal pond, and it is meant to dry up in summer, and that’s okay. (Got it?)
And then I’m right under the Granville Street bridge, looking yet again at boats bobbing in the water, and yet again I am not focused on the boats.
I’m looking beyond, at that bright blue horizontal line of signage that placards the False Creek Fishermen’s Wharf, with its moorings and facilities for independent commercial fishers, and a wharf where the public can buy their catch.
More precisely, I’m focused on the pale blue rectangle, there on the left, just off all that bright blue.
That’s the old shipping container that now houses Go Fish — the fish purchased right there on the wharf, served up with chips and other delights, both trad & less so. They take no reservations, offer no indoors seating, and there is always a line-up.
Later, with my grilled wild salmon & salad, I plonk myself in one of those green bucket chairs, and enjoy my fish. And the view. And a bit of a rest.
And then… I walk back east.
The high route, this time, not the Seawall. It climbs me into the upper elevations of Charleson Park, all forest and dappled bark-chip trails…
2 June 2025 – Only moss is on the agenda. Muzzles & monsters turn up on their own.
Moss is on the agenda because it’s about to go into its seasonal decline. Moss thrives in cool damp, suffers in dry heat. I want one last fix, and the Camosun Bog is the place to pay tribute.
As boardwalk signage points out…
the bog is, literally, built on moss.
Fortunately, despite the glossy new salal leaves and the bright growing trips of the evergreens that encircle the bog and speak of this new season…
the mossy carpet is still green, not yet bleached to its mid-summer pallor.
The moss is not just on the ground, either. Look at these trees!
So, as I leave the bog and start meandering north-east through the neighbourhood of West Point Grey, I am still moss-optimistic. And, despite distractions like this spiral of Buddhist prayer flags on a street-corner shrub…
and this bear-moose duo, endlessly paddling their way across somebody’s front yard…
I do see more moss.
Just look at these sidewalk sentinels, still wearing their winter finery, as they march their way down West 19th Avenue!
After all this, my attitude is: agenda met. No more expectations. I’ll just keep walking for a while — get in those steps — and then catch a bus.
Next thing I know, down by Alma & West Broadway, I’m being muzzled.
This is such good news.
There’s a mural by this artist in my own neighbourhood, one that both pleases & frustrates me. I like it for its own sake, but the style very loosely reminds me of Toronto street artist BirdO…
and I really, really would like to know the Vancouver artist’s name. Can’t get close enough to the mural near my home to look for any ID — but here, there’s a whole wall-full of his images, in an open alley.
Multiple images, and a tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat (the crown, upper right)… and a plaque identifying the artist. I learn, and it is my pleasure to inform you, that this mural is the work of Tokyo-born, Vancouver-based contemporary artist Taka Suda.
I am happy indeed, as I drop down the last few blocks to West Broadway.
An eye-flick left, into another alley, where the little window in this tired old shed…
suggests it must have started life as a stable. Surely that was the hay loft, above?
After that, my eyes flick straight ahead, on down busy Alma Street.
Another high rise going up, ho-hum. But then eye-flick becomes eye-focus, as I notice the monster riding high at the angle of that top corner.
See it? Shades of Hunchback of Notre Dame…
A passing pedestrian notices my fixed gaze, and nods her head. “Like gargoyles, aren’t they?” she says, her smile showing she quite likes the idea.
“Gargoyles”? Plural? I walk closer, on down Alma. (I feel like I’m stalking the building.)
And yessirree, gargoyles-plural. There are three, one defining the top corner of each ledge.
The closer I get, the clearer they become, and I need to refine my language.
Not monsters. Not gargoyles.
Ravens. (Later online research tells me this building — a luxury residential rental building — is named The Raven.)
I spin around for an angle that shows them in triumphant profile…
27 May 2025 — Or, for extra sibilance, seven street-side signs of summer.
Because there they all were, as I walked a modest loop near home: one sign after another that we Canadians know what season this is, even if the solstice hasn’t yet rolled around. The May Two-Four weekend is behind us, and summer has begun.
Sign # 1: sidewalk tree, boasting a brand-new swing.
Sign # 2: lawn cat, luxuriating in the new warmth of the earth.
Sign # 3: fencepost cat, rocking his brand-new sunglasses.
Sign # 4: a pair of geese (faux), nesting in the gravel (real).
Sign # 5: a solo goose (real), nibbling new blades of grass (also real).
Sign # 6: garage-top veggies, tilting their faces to the sun.
And finally…
Sign # 7: victims of spring cleaning, hoping to find a new home.
Would you like a bonus sign of summer? I found myself walking on the shady side of the street.
I can almost see you nodding in recognition. All winter long, we walk on the sunny side. And then, suddenly, one day, oup-là!, it’s the great switch-over. Now we seek the shade.
16 May 2025 – It’s a chores + pleasure walk that will loop me west for a while and then back home. Practically just out my door, I’m standing transfixed by this — let’s face it — unexceptional street corner.
It’s exceptional only in that it is so very… city.
Street & sidewalk & sleek black new-build & fake Tudor old-build (to be incorporated into yet another new-build) & street murals & hydro wires & parked cars. Also trees bursting with spring blossoms & a blue sky over all.
All the entangled grey & green of a city. Grey, the hardscape of human construction; green, persistent nature; also “green,” human intervention meant to enhance nature, and co-exist rather than simply dominate.
Hardly an original thought, but it sticks in mind, and shapes how I see what I see, for the rest of my walk.
Oh, all right! It does not shape how I see what I see right here, chalked on a south-side rampart for the Cambie Bridge.
I throw this in, just because it is irresistible. Doubly cheeky, as well.
First, it suggests that We absorb Them, not vice-versa. Second, it demotes Them to the less-autonomous status of territory, not province. (Provinces exercise constitutional power in their own right; the three territories — Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut — exercise delegated powers under the authority of the Parliament of Canada.)
Highly amused, I leave patriotic red & white behind me, and return to urban grey & green.
Lots of grey, as I start north across the bridge.
A bit of green, in those tall trees on the far right edge — and an impressive display of “green,” though it is literally coloured grey. Just left of the green trees, you’ll find what looks like the five fingers of an upraised hand, complete with fingernails. Those are the exhaust stacks of the Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility down below. The NEU transfers waste heat from area sewers to insulated underground pipes, which in turn distribute the energy (via hot water) to the neighbourhood.
Panoramic views of grey & green as I near the north end of the bridge, with parkland and trails either side of False Creek, framed by city buildings beyond.
Some tucked-away green, a “green” initiative of the City, below the north-end ramparts…
where some local residents sponsor a garden, under the City’s Green Streets program.
I cross Cooperage Way, heading back toward the water, and skirt the side of a kiddy playground. It’s an important amenity, amid grey Creek-side condo towers — “green” in itself, and with the hidden “green” of recycled car tires underfoot instead of concrete.
Plus! all that fresh-mown very green grass. And the intoxicating smell of fresh-mown grass.
More fresh-mown grass, and indeed the mower mowing, as I come alongside Concord Community Park.
Grey & green & “green.” And a question mark. Three acres of park, with basketball and volleyball and table tennis and Muskoka chairs and landscaping, and it’s all swell. It is also, maybe, temporary. Concord = Concord Pacific, “landlord” (as the City itself puts it) of great swathes of this land, and busy building buildings, because that’s what they do. I can’t find any clear statement of whether, or how long, this park will remain green before transforming to the grey of another condo tower.
I do find this City of Vancouver page about Northeast False Creek park design, all about revitalization plans for various City parks in this area. Which is good. The partners, however, are the City, the Vancouver Park Board (which the current City council wants the Province to eliminate) and Concord Pacific (aka the “landlord”).
I’d say the future balance of grey & green is still unknown.
Another unknown, as I round the end of False Creek and pass a bike ramp in Creekside Park.
Not a mystery to rival “who is Banksy?”, but a mystery nonetheless. I’ve seen several other of these whimsical little creations in other parks, signed OXIDE. No clue as to their artist’s identity, not even online — except for various people fretfully asking “Who is OXIDE?” and getting no answer.
The bike path, this bit behind Science World, is always busy. Grey, green and “green.”
I’m particularly taken by the living fences, the way living shoots are bent to edge the landscaping, growing more lush as the season progresses.
Bike accommodation across Quebec Street, on the pavement surround for the Main Street / Science World SkyTrain station.
Lots of grey, and, with those bike racks, some “green.” Literal green in some of the mosaics as well, especially this one in the foreground, titled Environment.
I lean in, to read the sticker somebody has slapped at the centre of each mosaic.
Well now.
If “green” is about preserving the planet, about co-existence and sustainability… then I hereby declare this sticker to be Honorary Green.
9 May 2025 – The #19 bus, as always, vibrates with worlds other than my immediate own. The route heads north through Chinatown, East Vancouver & Yaletown, and then slices west across the downtown core before its terminal stop in Stanley Park.
It therefore serves residents of all those communities, plus everyone who is just passing through — office workers, sporty types equipped for Stanley Park trails, urban culture-vultures with the art gallery or public library in mind, and assorted tourists puzzling their maps.
I find a seat in the crowded front section, and discover I’ve landed in a discussion — a dissertation — about “lifers” in the prison system. More specifically, about the reality check surely now being administered to a newbie in that system. He is someone known to Rhinestone Girl on my side of the aisle (applying extra mascara as she listens) and to Bare Knee Guy on the other side (his jeans simply worn out, not designer-chic).
Bare Knee Guy is explaining these facts of life to Rhinestone Girl, based on his own time inside. Their voices are loud, the vignettes are grisly, and the F-word once again proves its astounding versatility.
And yet! Their sentences are also grammatical & articulate, and the conversational tone is calm & engaged. Didactic, even.
I begin to feel I’ve fallen into a surreal one-on-one tutorial, as BK Guy describes how the “25-to-life” system works, here in Canada, and R Girl asks intelligent follow-up questions, never losing focus even as she switches from mascara to lip gloss and starts work on her lower lip.
The session grows even more learned when Shuffle Man inches painfully onto the bus, is offered the seat next to Bare Knee Guy, hears the topic of conversation, and joins in. “They changed it,” he wheezes. “Changed life sentences.” BK Guy agrees: “F**k yah! After Hell’s Angels blew up that bus in Montreal, killed that kid. Used-t’a be, kill one guy, kill a bunch, don’t matter, same sentence, but now they’re not consecutive, they’re back to back.” Rhinestone Girl breathes, “Holy f**k.” She understands the implication.
The tutorial breaks up ’round the corner on Pender Street, when Rhinestone Girl puts away her makeup, gathers her shopping, and asks Bare Knee Guy to help her get her stuff off the bus. He jumps up, lifts her two hanging plants (cheerful petunias, staples of summer balconies nation-wide), deposits them on the sidewalk, and gets back on the bus.
It’s cheerful, it’s helpful, it’s kind. I’m becoming quite respectful of BK Guy. Even more so, a few stops on, when a young indigenous couple get on, and he calls out, “Hey man! Ya dropped some money!” And they had–a $20 bill. BK Guy could have scooped it for himself, but he didn’t. The couple thank him, he bobs his head in acknowledgment. Somewhere along the way, Shuffle Man has disappeared. Eventually BK Guy and I get off at the same stop. Behind me, I hear him say exactly what I’ve just said, to the driver: “Thanks!”
We go our separate ways, me walking up Hamilton Street, my destination being a dance/literary event at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. My route takes me past this dingy building.
It’s the Del Mar, which opened as the reasonably upscale Cadillac Hotel in 1912 but which, despite its heritage status as the one hold-out original building on this block…
and despite the rah-rah wording of this plaque, is now one of the City’s SROs, a single room occupancy hotel. After my bus ride with Rhinestone Girl et al., after that moment with their worlds, I look at the Del Mar with different eyes.
And then I’m past the Del Mar, I’m up at West Georgia, and I’m breathing in the ozone of this fountain that chatter-sparkles one corner of the 1950s Canada Post building, now restored and expanded into The Post, a full city block of offices and glossy shops.
Across the street, in Library Square, I enter my own next world. I slide into the VPL’s spiral embrace…
meaning to head straight for the elevator to the 8th floor and my destination event. But of course I get sidetracked, here in the soaring atrium, by the discards bin (between the bottom two pillars, on the left).
Which pulls me into Charles Darwin’s world.
Well, no. Into Darwin’s Orchestra, an almanac that promises readers “a daily dose of cultural history.”
I look up today, May 9, and discover it takes me to the world of Gulliver’s Travels, 1711. I notice that May 10, were I to jump ahead, would take me to Kenneth Grahame’s 1907 world of Wind in the Willows.
A full 365 days of natural- and cultural-history discoveries, for just $3!
I vow to come pick it up after my 8th-floor event.
The event, “Translating Rosario Castellanos,” celebrates the centennial of this Mexican author with Spanish & English commentary (about the author, translating her letters, the impact of her work) and then…
with a tribute dance up & down & around the staircase stage, created and performed by this trio of local Latino artists.
At the end we applaud them, they applaud us, and I’m back in my own world, with my own immediate focus.
Go buy that book!
Only to discover, after combing the bin very, very carefully, that somebody else has beat me to it.
Well… “Holy f**k,” as Rhinestone Girl might say.
I, however, being the WASP Old Lady that I am, instead laugh and draw the appropriate rueful lesson: Next time, don’t wait.
I’m still caught between amusement & chagrin as I leave the building. I promptly fall into a temporal/cultural/architectural whirlpool of worlds, sparked by the building opposite.
This building.
Those bouncy cubes comprise the Deloitte Summit, a 24-storey office tower that opened in fall 2022 and has always struck me with its visual contrast to the rounded, spiralling forms of the library it faces — the 1995 work of Israeli-Canadian-American architect Moshe Safdie, a building lauded by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the world’s “Beautiful Libraries.” (Up there with the Bodleian, in Oxford; the Library of Trinity College, in Dublin; the Stuttgart City Library, in Stuttgart; and the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne, in Paris.)
Vancouver’s Merrick Architecture, Executive Architect for the Deloitte Summit, calls the tower’s design “a playful aggregation of reflective yet transparent stacked boxes.” Westbank, the project development company, says the cubes were inspired by this lamp, the work of 20th-c. Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi.
The urban architecture website Skyrise Vancouver says the design gives the tower “a sense of rotating motion that references the Colosseum-like Vancouver Public Library across the street.”
Me? I drop back to my native-Montrealer, 1960s world, and I say: oh yes, it references Safdie — but unintentionally, and not his Library Square project.
When my physical eye looks at the Vancouver building, my mind’s eye sees Habitat ’67, the Montreal housing complex that launched Safdie’s career and gave added punch to the exciting new design aesthetic of Expo ’67 as a whole.
See what I mean?
And then, full of all those worlds, I walk back down to Pender Street and catch a #19 for home.
It delivers no tutorials. I am left to my own thoughts, my own world, for the entire ride.
"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 