1 January 2025 – And what always tops the Resolution list?
Get more exercise.
Well… Vancouverites are on it already.
Yesterday, after my own get-some-exercise walk through Stanley Park and back toward town from Second Beach, I see this cluster of tents set up on the shores of English Bay.
Coming closer, I hear a deep-bass male voice doing sound checks, and then practising his “Happ-py new year, everybody!”
Coming right up to it, I see this is not prep for some dissolute New Year’s Eve blow-out. It is prep for a serious New Year’s Day feat of athletic endurance.
The annual Polar Bear Swim. Still underway as I write these words, but with years of tradition behind it.
Mind you, I’ve already had my own modest bit of exercise, this 1st day of the year!
Down to False Creek, just to say hello. Where there’s lots of exercise underway.
Including swimming.
All right, they do it year-round, but it counts.
As I follow that False Creek tributary through Hinge Park, I come to the playful little bridge connecting one side to t’other…
and then peer inside.
Where, at the far end, I see a father beginning to swing his little girl down-down-DOWN the steps to enter the bridge.
I meet them toward that far end.
She stamps her feet on the echoing deck, and giggles at me. I stamp my feet, and giggle right back at her. To her father’s vast amusement, she and I then have ourselves a foot-stamping contest. (And a giggle contest.)
Day 1 of a new year, and the exercise box is ticked!
29 December 2024 – Also pandas & moo-cows & more, as I have yet to discover. All I know, before I set out, is that it is positively heaving down out there.
But I go out anyway, because, delightful as holiday sloth has been, it’s time to move my body.
Dripping tree against a sodden sky…
but happy ferns, in this front yard…
and happy winter moss on this tree, plus a cheerful ornament hung by some passing pedestrian.
The Vancouver Special is hunkered down, properly stoic — as it ought to be, here in its own native eco-system…
while the vintage green lampshade next door rises to the occasion, knowing it looks better in rain than sunshine.
Out on Main Street, a trio of pandas advertise dim sum…
a solitary cat advertises records…
three dogs advertise their very own bakery…
and an exceptionally silly cow (through this butcher’s doorway, left) advertises which succulent cuts come from which bits of her anatomy.
What is more dejected than a construction site in the rain? Not yet able to advertise the condo delights to come.
But this trio of guitars is warm & dry & a good advertisement for the magic of music…
especially Mr. Heavy Metal in the middle, whose tiny lettered plaque reads:
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
It’s all very swell, wonderfully diverting.
Nonetheless, I wish to point out that, after all this walking… it is still heaving down out here.
So I go home.
As I bring my dripping self through the door I envy, not for the first time, dogs’ ability to shake themselves dry.
Just look at that spiral shake!
But alas, we humans are not built like that.
So I do the next best thing.
I make myself a mug of spicy Mesoamerican hot chocolate.
(Recipes abound. Mine is 1 c. milk simmered with 1/2 tbsp honey, and a pinch each of ground ginger, cloves & cayenne; and then a generous 1/8 c unsweetened cocoa and bit of vanilla extract whisked in at the end.)
While I’m enjoying the drink — and wiggling my toes to extract maximum flavour — I read more about the long history of cacao & chocolate in Mayan and Aztec cultures.
Oh look, it is still raining. But I no longer care.
21 December 2024 – Today is Solstice, 2024, and the tilt is the story. Twice a year earth’s axis pauses that breathless instant, and then begins to tilt in the opposite direction.
Where the tilt goes, so goes light: strengthening with Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; ebbing with Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere; giving all of us, whatever our hemisphere, reason to think about light.
I now define “light” very broadly, thanks to a friend who watched children at a Nutcracker performance dance in the aisles during intermission, and observed that light takes many forms, including delight and inspiration.
So I head out in the rain…
planning to walk my loop down-around the Cambie Bridge, and to see how much non-sunbeam light I may discover along the way. For example? Ohhh, whatever seems to provide us humans with inspiration, joy, energy, confidence, courage, resilience and the jolt of the delightfully unexpected.
Since all this is Inspired by my friend’s experience at the ballet, how fitting that my first observation is the window into the iDance studio.
It frames a scene warm with light, creativity, colour, and ways to live up to the studio’s motto, displayed on the back wall: “Don’t ever be too shy to dance your heart out.”
Down and around to the north/west…
and I’m closing in on Science World (L, above the fluorescent green-garbed pedestrian) and its mysterious clanking, whizzing tower of delights (R, with white struts, above the black-garbed cyclist). Still this far away, and I can already hear the sound effects.
Up close to the tower, people peer with fascination at the wondrous gizmos.
I finally decide to stop wondering, and find out. What is this?
I march into Science World and ask the Information Desk to tell me about the tower. Two people later, I learn it is called the Tower of Bauble, and yes it was recently restored, and yes, there is information on the website, and yes, here is contact information for Science World’s Director of Fun Times, who will be glad to tell me more.
I thank everyone for their help, promise to pursue this in January, and head back outside, in very good humour despite the still-pelting rain.
I start down Seawall along the north side of False Creek. Next to a marina building, with Plaza of Nations ferry dock on one side and BC Place Stadium on the other, I lean against a convenient pole under a convenient overhang, and spend a few minutes watching who is out there in all this weather — presumably bringing the light of satisfaction into their lives, as they pursue whatever it is they want to pursue.
In short order:
two runners…
two bicyclists…
two umbrella-ists…
and a motorcyclist.
Back into the rain — time to get on with my own chosen activity! — and more examples of what everybody else wants to do:
man and dog (and thrown stick), at play in the refurbished Coopers’ Park dog park..
passing ferries, at work and on schedule, their starboard and port lights flashing across the water…
three kayakers…
and, as I climbing the north-side ramp up to the Cambie Bridge…
an invitation to smile.
Off the bridge on the south side, heading east again — and more smiles.
It’s a whole convoy of determined walkers, setting themselves an impressive pace. The lead woman, first of all those yellow slickers, throws her arms wide in greeting as they approach.
There’s a place to obtain dog-waste bags, on the western edge of Hinge Park…
and, just a little farther along, a place to deposit your used needles.
(I remember the narcan-kit woman I met recently, and think that, oh yes, light in the darkness takes many forms.)
On Manitoba St. now, approaching West 4th., and I meet a pop-up crafts fair — “bringing [says the signage] the neighbourhood together by featuring local brands, artists & spaces.” Of course I go in.
I don’t buy anything, but I have some great conversations. “They just told me they’re not going to renew my studio lease,” says a potter. “That sucks, right? Except… I was kinda thinking I didn’t like that place any more. So it’s a good kick in the ass. Yah. It’s good.”
I meet Justine., and pause to talk some more. She is Justine Crawford, brand name Justine Crawfart (Crawf-art, get it?), with a selection of note cards that reflect her Asian heritage on her table…
and…
a Western magpie on her tummy.
It really is spectacular! I promise her a copy of the picture; she grins; we chat a bit more, and I’m away.
Fresh new winter moss decorates a tree on Ontario near 5th Ave., and a 2018 VMF mural (by Phantoms in the Front Yard) still decorates the building wall opposite.
Pretty soon I’m home, shaking off wet clothes.
It was a rain-pelting walk, and full of the light I like best — laughter and conversation and physical activity and creativity and surprises and curiosity both satisfied and slated for follow-up.
Sunbeams not needed.
Then, an hour later…
sunbeams all over the place.
May we all have light in our lives — received, created, shared. Of every kind.
14 December 2024 – Search for “light in the darkness” quotes (whether through AI or your own adorably old-fashioned skills) and you’ll find this concept transcends time, place, culture and activity. It is one of the great human concerns, one of our core needs and comforts.
As we approach Winter Solstice, here in the Northern Hemisphere, I am particularly alert to the absence of light.
And to its presence.
Two examples, both unexpected.
The Banner
Yesterday, by 5:30 pm, the sky has long been fully dark. I walk toward Ray Saunders’ local clock, our Mount Pleasant clock, and it sparkles with lights. Well, I know about that. I’ve already shown you the clock by night. Yesterday, for the first time, I notice the banners by night.
I don’t go around expecting angels. Especially not today, late afternoon, standing slightly dazed in a London Drugs check-out line. The young woman in front of me is just part of the context: mid-20s perhaps, slightly chubby, tattoo’ed & lip-pierced & leather-jacketed, and somehow wrapped in friendly calm rather than line-up boredom.
Suddenly a clerk mutters an apology and reaches around me to hand her a neat oval cylinder. “I found one!” she exclaims. The young woman shines with joy. “Oh, this is wonderful! Thank you!” she cries and clips the case to a ring on her jacket.
I cock my head. She hasn’t paid for it. And she’s not being furtive about it — she’s about to pay for something else, but this item, she has simply appropriated. She sees me looking at her, and smiles.
So I ask. And she explains.
“It’s narcan.” I am still puzzled. “For drug overdoses.”
Now I understand, and my next question is obvious: “Do you do street patrols? Alley patrols?” She gives a self-deprecating little shake of the head. “No, no. But I grew up in East Van, I live in East Van, so I always carry a kit, you know? Today I came out without one. I’m so glad she found one for me — I don’t like not being ready.”
Later, at home, I look it up. I learn narcan = Naloxone = an injectable antidote for opioid drug poisoning. In 2012, the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control launched its Take Home Naloxone Program, which provides training and kits via drug stores and other distribution centres province-wide. The kits are available without prescription, and are free to “people at risk of an opioid drug poisoning and people likely to witness and respond to a drug poisoning.”
Standing there in the drug store, I don’t know about this program. But I do know the importance of what this young woman has taken upon herself to do, as part of her daily routine.
She’s turning to go, and I tap her arm. “I don’t believe in angels,” I begin, “not in ethereal beings. But people like you… you’re my idea of angels.”
She gives a little whufff of amazement, and then says, “Could I hug you?”
2 December 2024 – Fog & sun & withdrawals & advances & teases & full glory.
And a few crows.
Let’s set a benchmark. Let’s pick the view on November 28, when the weather chose to beam her sparkling charm in all directions. At 8:08 am, the rising sun bounced off east-facing towers…
and flooded downtown Vancouver, the North Shore and those Coast Mountains with light.
This morning — and, at 8:26, only minutes later in the day — the view is very different.
Fog. With about a block and a half of visibility. As for mountains… What mountains?
A crow waits it out.
Bit of a breakthrough, at 8:50…
largely withdrawn, by 9:41…
though a new line of light opens up at 9:48…
and tempts this crow (presumably equipped with GPS) to take flight on eastward.
His instincts are good.
By 10:37 the clouds are wispy and the haze is beating a retreat.
At 2:52 pm, it’s full sunshine, everywhere you look.
Look while you can. Sunset is barely an hour away.
30 November 2024 – Vancouverite and, more to the point, horologist Raymond Saunders died one week ago today, age 84. I want to pay my own small tribute because, multiple times most days, I walk by one of his creations. It is part of my neighbourhood, and therefore part of my life.
This is the Mount Pleasant Welcome clock, which he was commissioned to design and build in the late 1980s as part of the uptick then underway in the neighbourhood.
But it is not the clock for which he is best-known.
This one is.
Residents and tourists alike, we know this clock: the Gastown Steam Clock. In the mid-70s, Saunders, already an experienced horologist, was asked to design and build a clock to camouflage a steam vent at the corner of Water and Cambie streets in the Gastown district of downtown Vancouver.
The result, unveiled in 1977, was 16 sculptured feet of bronze & copper designed to reflect the buildings around it. For the first ten years the clock was indeed steam-powered (perhaps, but perhaps not, the first steam-powered clock in the world). Since then it has run on electricity, though the whistle…
emulating an 1890s steam locomotive whistle, is still really-truly powered by steam.
Obituaries and other articles and videos (click here, and take your choice) tell us he designed and built more than 150 customized clocks world-wide, often in equal part art works but always functioning clocks as well. I’m charmed to know, for example, that his Scenic World Steam Clock, installed in Katoomba Australia, commemorates coal miners and their pit ponies — and, to mark the hours, plays Waltzing Matilda.
Our local clock is much less grand…
but it reflects this neighbourhood, bearing not only the Vancouver coat of arms…
but sprigs of hops as well. After all, this was, and is again, the Brewery District.
The clock’s image, like the physical clock, is part of who we are. You see it incorporated into shop signage…
and on sidewalk banners….
and in my own Winter Solstice blog post, last 21 December…
when I stood patiently in front of the clock, waiting to photograph it at exactly 7:27 pm — the exact moment of solstice, Pacific Time. While my theme was the phenomenon of the solstice, not the clock or its creator, I naturally turned to this clock to make my point.
The obits tell us that Ray Saunders was still fixing clocks and advising collectors world-wide right to the end. They also tell us he was still playing poker right to the end. His last game, with friends, took place last Saturday.
26 November 2024 – I’ll get to “Great Northern.” Let’s start with “bimble.”
I learned this splendid word just three days ago, reading Snow! — James Elkington’s latest post to his blog Mountains, Myths and Moorlands. The post began, “We woke to a lot of snow, I managed to get onto the moors for a bimble.” Subsequent e-chat with this Yorkshireman taught me that the word is both noun and verb, and means “to walk about without purpose.”
(I am not going to rename my blog “Bimble Broad”! Though the idea does have me giggling…)
Yes well, on to Great Northern Way.
I decide to have myself a bimble the length of GNW, so-named in tribute to its earlier life as a stretch of the Great Northern Railway route from Seattle to Vancouver.
Easy access for me, from my home just a bit uphill: down Main, turn right-east on East 6th instead of left-west, then left on Brunswick… and there it is, the Great Northern Way, just a few blocks farther down.
Down by the construction crane, which will be there for a good while yet.
There’s all the activity for the Broadway Subway Project — the westward extension of the Millennium Line — and then there’s the whole South Flats neighbourhood thing as well. I already know about the former (and live with it, in my own neighbourhood); I become aware of the latter in the course of this bimble.
Down/down, north/north, past a curious cat on a gate post at East 2nd…
and here I am, at GNW itself. Already so transformed from its railway/industrial/service area, let alone from its earlier, natural life as the final stretch of False Creek before the needs of expanding commerce decided to fill it in.
To the right of the construction crane, the white, blocky complex of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, whose arrival triggered this latest academic/creative/high-tech/digital era. Far right, the Centre for Digital Media (UBC, Simon Fraser U, Emily Carr, BC Institute of Technology). Far left, the corrugated metal and bright red of Canvas, one of the area’s new-builds catering to the Emily Carr vibe by offering its condo owners such amenities as flexible artist gallery space and collective workshop space, along with the more usual fitness centre and children’s playground.
And, in between, the work-in-progress GNW Emily Carr transit station, with its hoardings and bouncy signage to explain what’s happening, along with viewing slots so you can see for yourself.
I read signage, I peer downward through a viewing slot.
I read more signage.
I learn how to move three elephants, should the need occur…
and, around the corner, I learn why to pat every dog I see.
Still hoardings, still signage, but now with a whole other focus.
South Flats.
With an “s.” Please notice that. Not “z.”
Until recently, this trending area, to prove how very artistic/creative/trending it was, branded itself Flatz. Not like the grimy, grubby old industrial False Creek Flats spelled with a humble “s.”
Nosiree. With a “z”!
And now the anonymous They have decided that “z” is passé.
This whole area, the whole length of Great Northern, is now branded Flats-with-an-s. (I remember a New Zealand academic, at a Learned Society conference I once covered for the CBC, observing that every reputation goes through three stages: “Bunk, Debunk, Rebunk.” Z has been debunked; S has been rebunked.)
My bimble is showing me that South Flats is A Thing. A Very Big Thing. Forgive me this moment of flackery, but I have to offer you the development’s website, its explanation of this emerging “tech and arts hub.” Rapid transit is just part of what’s going on, in behind those hoardings.
A lot of that is still to come. While waiting, you can play South Flats bingo…
or just visit Nemesis Coffee, whose striking petal shape is also (see above) the central icon in the bingo game.
Far side of Nemesis, the eastern entrance to Emily Carr…
and facing it, the Centre for Digital Media. Except I’ve stopped gawking at all that high-design high-tech.
I am now gawking at winter moss.
The season has begun. I remember, my first winter here, becoming totally enraptured by the vibrant green of winter moss. I am still enraptured.
On east along Great Northern Way, lots of chain link fence, with Things Happening in behind.
Nature likes chain link fence, vines especially, they climb all over it. Even when the fence is mostly draped in bright blue tarpaulin. Vine still finds a way.
I am fascinated to see that somebody has deliberately, carefully, spray-painted some of those leaves blue, to match.
I am now, almost, at the end of GNW. The thoroughfare itself won’t end, it will just — yet again — change name. (West 4th to West 6th to West 2nd to East 2nd to GNW to East 6th.) Never mind! Here opposite China Creek North Park, it is still Great Northern Way. As I look back, I can read the purpose behind its broad, straight lines, and see again the railway track it was designed to carry.
And then, just like that, I find I have left Great Northern Way. I have passed Glen Drive, I am almost at Clark Drive, and I am now on East 6th Avenue.
I am also passing one of the City’s icons: the East Van Cross.
Currently behind chain link and tarps, because that’s the here-and-now of things, the artwork has its own decade-plus of history, and speaks to a much longer history than that.
Asked by the City to commemorate Vancouver’s role as host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, artist Ken Lum created this sculpture. It is not a symbol of Christian piety. He drew his inspiration from a graffito image of the day, frequently seen in East Vancouver alleys, the intersection of “East” with “Van” in a spare, elegant shape dictated, Scrabble-like, by the interplay of letters. “Over the years, the symbol had been adopted as an emblem for East Vancouver as a whole,” said Lum, “but its appearance has generally been tentative rather than overt.” Lum brought it out of the alleys, made it overt.
As I turn north onto Clark, my bimble ends. I am now walking with purpose. I shall briskly take myself on down to East Hastings, and start the bus trip home.
The Coast Range Mountains are before me. The light is failing, the sky is snowy, and the mountain peaks — look at those Grouse Mountain ski runs — are white with snow.
Snow! It’s perfect. James Elkington’s post about snow taught me to bimble, and my bimble ends with snow.
23 November 2024 – A play on “bright & early,” of course, and a favourite winter-time quip of the host of the CBC early-morning radio show that I listened to for years.
He’d sign off, promising to greet us again the following morning, “Dark and early.”
What came to mind yesterday, as I walked an alley just off East Broadway & Brunswick…
is that, this time of year, “dark & early” describes both ends of the day.
It is exactly 3:53:36 p.m. — not yet 4 p.m.! — and Nomi Chi’s VMF mural (2016, the Festival‘s inaugural year) broods with extra drama in the failing light.
(I know the change is increasingly dramatic, the farther north you go. I do know this. I spent time in Inuvik, one January, and learned that the Arctic is not only the Land of the Midnight Sun, it is also the Land of the Mid-day Moon. But… now I am here, and here I am now, and this is what I notice, in my here-and-now.)
18 November 2024 – This weekend — for the 28th year — was the annual Eastside Culture Crawl. I take advantage of Sunday’s better weather (merely iffy, as opposed to torrential) to join in.
I’ll visit studios like this one…
but mostly, as seems to be my personal Crawl tradition, I’ll just go for a big old walk. And visit some studios along the way.
When I cross 2nd Avenue, northbound on Scotia Street…
flaming beech trees welcome me to official Crawl territory: it runs from the waterfront farther north to right here, 2nd Avenue. (And, east-west, from Victoria Drive to Columbia Street.)
Also part of my personal tradition: my first visit is always to the bustling Arts Factory on Industrial Avenue, but before that — just to get in the mood — I loop my way through the False Creek Flats, taking in their evolving mix of new facilities and old warehouses as I go.
Streets in here have helpful names. Western Street runs up/down the Flats’ western boundary; Station Street to the east runs to the train station; and they are connected, you’ve guessed it, by Southern, Central and Northern streets, in the appropriate geographic order. North of Northern lies Terminal, and beyond that, Industrial.
I pass one of my all-time favourite rusty warehouses at the corner of Southern and Western, now with a gleaming new high-ish rise in the background…
but I’m even more taken by this tear-drop puddle reflecting the warehouse back at me, as I round the corner to head north on Western.
A huge stump marks the corner of Western and Northern. The building looks more derelict every year, yet it is still in operation, as its grumpy shipping-receiving notice makes clear.
After my visit to the Arts Factory, I double back west to Main Street. This makes no logistical sense at all!
It’s the most perversely roundabout way possible to get to Gore Avenue, which houses the three studios I’ve decided to visit this year — but, hey, I’m out for a walk, right? The rounder-about it gets, the better.
And I’m glad for my few blocks on Main. They take me past something that may look bleak, but deserves respect.
Yes, it’s behind chain-link fence and yes, it is November-dreary. But it is also a seasonal community garden, here at the corner of Milross, and it bears our local Yarn Bomber’s tribute of a crochet heart — recognition of the resilience of people doing what they can, in a tough context.
Back east along Prior, heading for the end of the block where I will turn north on Gore. I plan to scoot right along, but I’m stopped by this Mexican cervecería, just past Hogan’s Alley.
A moment for a giggle, and then eastward-ho to the corner of Gore Avenue, with the venerable Hunnybee Bruncheonette [sic] on the left and equally venerable Strathcona homes on the right.
I’ve walked along Gore on other occasions, but it’s always been the ground-level shops that caught my attention — I’ve never thought who might be doing what, higher up in these old buildings. Today, I start to find out.
First target: Godzilla Studios, where one workshop — Street & Saddle — will be open to visitors. Once inside, once upstairs, I’m distracted en route by the instructions I see through an open washroom door over the waste paper bin.
Politeness seems to work! The bin is full to the brim, but the floor is clean.
On down the hall to Street & Saddle, a warm, welcoming and very impressive workshop of cheerful people and good clothing. Good business practices, too, as I learn from this sign on a counter top:
Isn’t that the best? Each year, their little shop keeps a whole pony’s-weight of fabric out of landfill.
Back down the stairs, out the door, on up the street to the Pot Spot Studio.
A word about stairs. Stairs literally come with art-crawl territory, since studios are usually located in the higher reaches of their respective buildings. Savvy artists, like these Pot Spot folk, make sure you know which stairs to climb…
and then give you a bonus.
Turn the corner to climb those red-arrowed stairs…
and a serpent leads the way.
As the potter at this top level studio wraps some purchases for other visitors, I hear a bit of his backstory: from his Russian homeland, to art school in Jerusalem, to — one year ago — Vancouver. I think of the losses, the struggles, the terrible choices that must be locked up in that chronology, and tell him I wish him well in his new life. His eyes soften, he nods acknowledgment.
North again on Gore, on to the eponymous Gore Studio, can’t miss it, just follow the sign for Kim Hung Noodles. (It’s the doorway I teased you with, at the start of this post.)
In, and up.
Again up.
And the invitation to go on up yet again. Again.
I’m not sure what that is! A multi-coloured toilet roll? An aerosol paint can? Doesn’t matter; It’s of a piece with the fantasy-land all around.
I find myself taking photos for some enchanted visitors who are struggling with their selfie technique, then do my own tour of the wonders, and then leave. Back down all those stairs, back out onto Gore Avenue.
With a last glance at that impressive building, noodle ghosts and all…
I walk past the Himalayan restaurant next door…
past the gloriously pungent Chinese market spilling out over the sidewalk…
and finally take myself back out to Main Street, and a bus ride home.
16 November 2024 – I enjoy walking this ‘hood, this part of Fairview. It’s a quiet stretch of older wooden homes, all very human scale and welcoming, with their front porches and front gardens.
But this street, indeed this whole area, is adjacent to the Broadway traffic artery and lies within the ambit of the comprehensive Broadway Plan — which, for all its consultations and talk of public space, is focused on intensification.
Land Assembly billboards have become commonplace.
The future is on its way.
I’m with Graffito Guy. It’s gonna be ugly.
On a happier note!
The Very Large Waterfowl I showed you in the previous post has been identified.
In her comment on the post, Lynette d’Arty-Cross was cautious enough only to say she was “reasonably certain,” but that’s good enough for me. We’re looking at a juvenile trumpeter swan.
Thank you, Lynette.
Do the rest of you know her blog (In the Net! – Pictures and Stories of Life)? If not, click here. You’ll be glad you did.
"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 