26 January 2025 – It is a brilliant, chilly day. It is officially capital-C Chilly as well — I’ve just watched stragglers crossing the Chilly Chase finish line at the False Creek seawall in Olympic Village.
Now I’m leaning on the railing that edges the rivulet flowing through Hinge Park into False Creek.
My mind is on those red berries, lower left.
The toddler next to me has a different preoccupation. She is looking through the reeds to what lies below.
“Why is ice?” she asks.
I can hear the smile in her father’s voice as he answers, “Because it’s cold.”
And I know, just as surely as he does, what comes next.
Sure enough! “Why is cold?”
Away they go, down the rabbit hole of “Why?”
I move on, full of respect for the endless patience of loving parents, as they help their little ones begin to make sense of the universe.
23 January 2025 — My legs want to go celebrate the relatively balmy temperature (4C) and the lack of anything heaving down at us out of the sky. Rough plan: bus rides to Morton Park on the edge of Stanley Park; my own two feet back through the West End on the Comox-Helmcken Greenway to downtown; a visit to the Outsiders and Others art gallery on Howe; and then … well I don’t know. It’ll sort itself out.
Fun, right from the first bus ride.
Old geezer hops on, sporting a grubby old hockey sweater bearing this logo:
I squeak with delight, shake two-thumbs-up at him, and soon we’re deep in our old-geezer memories about Rocket Richard, Boom-Boom Geoffrion and other heroes of the 1950s/60s Montreal Canadiens hockey team. I bail, to catch my Beach bus on out to Morton Park, but the hockey talk continues: he and another geezer start arguing the merits/stupidity of current Vancouver Canuck team strategy.
Second bus ride is as larky as the first. We would-be passengers put in an extra 30 seconds at the stop while the approaching driver brakes and waits for a solitary gull to walk — very, very slowly — across Station Street in front of the bus. We climb on board cheering the driver.
(He later proves equally considerate of human life forms, making a safe but illegal stop that allows an elderly lady to get off a bit closer to her destination, the Aquatic Centre.)
So I am buoyant with good humour and confidence in the day, as I turn turn off Davie Street onto Bidwell to walk on over to the Greenway. Right at the corner, I’m charmed by Fiona Dunnett’s design for the City utility box, with its happy musicians in a local park…
and I am equally charmed by the message I see on a stickie pressed to the top of the box, on the other side.
More street art, or at least street-viewed art, at Bidwell & Pendrell, where the base for the fence around Lord Roberts Elementary School bears design work by its 2016/17 students.
At Comox, I join the Greenway. The intersection is marked a pair of comfy black chairs (prudently bolted into place) — a repeating feature of this corridor, with its emphasis on restful human interaction.
This pair has an impromptu addition: a decidedly unofficial, and decidedly battered, wooden chair left by some anonymous donor. It is not bolted into place!
Street-side gardens everywhere, even if, mid-winter, there are more bare branches and bare earth than plants. This plaintive notice near Nicola, for example, seems unnecessary…
but no, I’m wrong.
Half a block on down the street…
I see my first snowdrop of the year.
The accelerating trend to glossy new towers, so visible on Davie Street, is less apparent here. Here so far, and this far west, architecture is older, smaller-scale and somehow more restful. A vintage brick apartment building faces an only slightly newer wooden equivalent at Comox and Broughton.
Volunteer-tended Green Streets gardens are prevalent — a feature here, as elsewhere, of the City program to promote greenery in (and I quote) “traffic-calming spaces.” Often accompanied by benches or pairs of those black chairs, the garden surroundings are indeed calming. You don’t have to love jargon to love the result.
Though sometimes, as in this garden at Broughton, I don’t much love the aesthetic, either.
But then… ohhhh, I get over myself. What’s not to love about gnomes & plastic owls & toads & toadstools & bunny-rabbits & watering cans & even a startled bird atop a column of improbably turquoise plastic vine?
Furthermore, there are gardens I really like a lot. So there.
Like the one at Jervis.
No… more precisely, like the brightly daubed fire hydrant next to this garden. With its elephant on top. (I did promise you an elephant, here he is.)
I’m also very fond of this garden near Bute, with its bike-wheel tribute to the joys of cycling.
Right at Bute, not a garden, but another expression of community and joy and creativity.
Chalk art.
I don’t know who Baba and Addy are, but this young artist wishes them well, and so do I.
I’m on the diagonal now, slicing through Nelson Park, passing between happy dogs in the off-leash park on my right and happy kiddies in the playground of Lord Roberts school annex on my left. I meet Bella, a slightly skittish Pomeranian/Husky cross, who eventually decides I am to be trusted and gives my hand a nuzzle. Her owner reaches the same conclusion, and allows me to feed her a treat. All three of us are pleased with the encounter.
I pause at a tree. It has pussy-willow-ish catkins on it, though I don’t know for sure that’s what they are. Anyway, that’s not why I pause. It’s the ornament that stops me. The world’s tiniest baby rain boot, bright green and adorable, dangles from a branch. Some infant kicked it off, and some later pedestrian has hung it high, in hopes the parent will come searching and find it.
Once on Nelson Street, I’m heading for the business/entertainment/financial district — serious downtown. At Burrard, the Wall Centre rises tall. It’s arresting in its own right, even more arresting as it throws Gaudí-esque reflections of buildings opposite.
Still arresting when I’m right in front of it, fountain spray adding further dynamics to the scene.
One last image: the quiet majesty of Arthur Erickson’s Law Courts Complex, seen from Nelson at Hornby…
before I turn onto Howe, make my visit to Outsiders and Others, with its decidedly different sensibility, and finally walk on north to Pender Street and my bus ride home.
No hockey sweaters or hockey talk, this time — instead, a loving young father gurgling nonsense at his toddler son. Everyone within earshot is as charmed as the baby.
20 January 2025 – We’re in a cold snap. Nothing like the extremes back East, just temperatures hovering below/above zero from night to day — low enough to set the hoar frost blooming early each morning.
Including along the Shoreline Trail, the pretty little trail in Port Moody that runs between Rocky Point Park and Old Orchard Park, cupping the eastern end of Burrard Inlet as it goes.
As I wait for my companion outside the SkyTrain station, I realize the oak leaf on the artwork at my feet and my own fingertips are in agreement: there’s a bite in the air.
But it dances through a blazing bright sky, and it is magical.
Hoar frost sparkles on the boardwalk across a marshy inlet…
encircles an ice-rimmed pond…
and sweeps across the entire marshland, right to the creek whose waters steam gently in the sun.
We cross mudflats on this rebuilt boardwalk, and agree it is much safer and more accessible than its wonky predecessor and is therefore A Very Good Thing — but also agree we miss the charm of that predecessor.
Then we quite rightly stop being such ingrates, and settle down to enjoy ourselves.
A waterfront blind farther along offers a chance to watch wildlife unobserved…
though at the moment we see only the stumps of old pilings, remnants of the McNair Cedar Mill that once operated here.
I’ve visited the mill site on previous Trail walks; tide is low enough to allow us to explore it today as well.
Only later online do I both learn the name of the mill and also see this 1925 photograph of the mill in operation. (Thank you Tessa Trethewey, for posting this photo on the I Love Port Moody blog on April 25 last year.)
Before we rejoin the Trail, I stop to admire this ziggurat, meticulously constructed from old mill bricks still lying around on-site. (I think for a moment, by ricochet, of the ephemeral clean-fill sculptures created out on Toronto’s Leslie Spit, by visitors who celebrate what lies to hand.)
Back on the Trail, what we have to hand is a collection of nature’s own tree-sculptures.
Companion burls high up one trunk…
and a whole lot of winter moss. An old scar, cushioned in moss, for example…
great rounded folds of bark rising from a mossy base…
and a moss-splattered tree that stands politely to one side as we look across reeds and marshes, across Burrard Inlet itself, to the mountains and distant snow peaks.
Warmed by the growing strength of the sun and also our own exertions, we decide we have more than earned lunch.
We retrace our steps, greeting hikers and patting dogs as we go, and settle into generous servings of Mexican comfort food. Our cheerful waitress, a rose tattoo peeping out from under her left cuff, says it is the perfect day to walk the Shoreline Trail.
12 January 2025 – First, “D” for the Everything, Everywhere Doctrine, which has set its targets for 2025: Greenland, Canada, Panama.
It is beyond alarming & insulting, it is surreal to hear the duly-elected incoming leader of a supposedly principled (and supposedly freedom-loving) country announce his intention to subjugate his neighbours — my country included.
Greenland he plans simply to buy, though upon questioning he explicitly does not rule out the use of military force. Canada he believes he can crush “by economic force.” Panama… well, the U.S. has a history of intervention in its southern neighbours, so there must be a long list of strategies already in the arsenal.
It is stirring, but not comforting, to read David Suzuki’s account (Toronto Star) of why he chose to return to Canada from the U.S. and why he hopes all Canadians “will fight to preserve our differences from [that other] great nation.” It is no comfort that some Americans (cf. this comment on my previous post by a Seattle-based reader) think that members of the incoming administration are “evil, twisted… and some are very stupid.” And it is no comfort to read that the subjugation plans are bound to fail (cf. Stephen Marche analysis, Maclean’s Magazine) since “at this point in history, America has come off 70 years of failed imperialist adventures.”
Even when the target nations are united and patriotic, even when the leaders of the aggressor nations are stupid and bungle their projects — even then — those projects still inflict great damage and suffering on the way through.
…
Shall we move on to a happier pair of D’s?
Doorways and Details
Fresh off a visit to a stunning exhibition in Equinox Gallery, I prowl my way back down this southern extension of Commercial Drive.
It is still home to vintage architecture and to small, independent shops and activities. Doorways are individual, and expressive.
This café with its door wide open…
and a collection of vintage bottles overhead.
This crafts workshop…
with its glorious live-edge door pull.
This café one block farther north, where the door may be physically closed but the signage welcomes you…
and a small notice apologizes for the need to bar pets…
and offers a free “puppiccino” in compensation.
An adjacent door, barred and locked, appears unfriendly, but is deceptive.
It guards something very friendly indeed, a tool-lending library — “an affordable community-based alternative to personal tool ownership or tool rental.”
Sadly, its window detail, hard to read through bars and glare, suggests neighbourly puppiccinos may become a thing of the past.
“How can you call this a development when the only thing going up is my rent.” Later I see land-acquisition notices in front of other vintage properties, citing CD-1 zoning, i.e. Comprehensive Development.
Another, much smaller doorway, this time near the north end of a narrow linear park threading its way parallel to Commercial Drive, on down to East Broadway.
One Little Free Library door, with two heart-warming details. First, the pointillist celebration of whales on the door…
and, second, the introduction to Harmonious Joan taped to the frame inside. (You don’t need to be a ukulele player, to be glad that people like HJ exist.)
One final “doorway” for you, and note those punctuation marks of uncertainty.
I debate its inclusion, and then decide that, yessiree! it qualifies. True, it is an intersection…
but are not intersections the doorway to a pair of streets?
Anyway the detail, another of the city’s sidewalk mosaics, deserves attention…
even if I cannot find a reference to it anywhere and so cannot identify it for you.
All these small things — ordinary, everyday, and worth defending.
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.
"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 