6 April 2025 – Three images from the last two days, and the subsequent discovery that all three dance to the letter “W.”
Water…
and Wood…
and Wall.
This one embodies a more complicated bit of alphabet than its companions. At the time, any designation would have been “S-for-shadow.” Because… well, look at it. Look how that boring wire-mesh fence throws filigree shadow on the rusted corrugated metal.
Even if we boot “S” to the sidelines, we can still applaud this image as a triple-W, all by itself.
Wall, check.
Also, Warehouse, check. The rusty metal covers a ramshackle old warehouse on False Creek South, one I’ve eyed with fascination for the last seven years, wondering whether entropy or the bulldozer would finally bring it down.
Turns out: bulldozer. The cheerful young City employee padlocking a bit of the security fence told us that yes, the building is about to be razed — but the wood will be saved.
W for wood!
“Inside this metal crap, it’s all old-growth timber. Old growth! Still in good shape. We’ll be taking it apart piece by piece, because the City plans to reassemble it as part of an industrial-heritage display.”
No, he didn’t know how soon, or where. We then grimaced our mutual recognition of the best-laid plans of mice, men and civic authorities.
31 March 2025 – Neither Zen nor any kind of dog is in my mind, as I step out the door into the fresh morning air.
My mind is perfectly happy with just the beginnings of a plan: walk to False Creek; take a ferry from Olympic Village to Granville Island; walk on west along the Seawall at least to Vanier Park, then head south into town, and then… Oh, never mind. Events will take over. As they do.
I’ll see what I see.
Vehicular back-chat in an alley, for starters…
followed by back-chat on a literal human back, as I near the Olympic Village dock on False Creek.
When I tell the cheerful young couple that I admire the image, the story gets even better. As he poses for my camera, he prompts her to take credit and explain. Turns out this is a line of jackets rightly called SwapWear, since — thanks to zippers and Velcro — you can swap out that back panel for additional choices. A changeable art gallery, right there on your back.
I walk off, much amused, to catch my ferry.
I’d’ve been even more amused had I known that — along with a Thoughtful Dog — more cat’s ears and more fish would become part of this walk as well.
But I don’t know that. And my Aquabus ride is quite enough to keep me up-energy and happy with the day.
Last time I was on Granville Island was February 20, when my post title summarized the experience: Off-Season Drizzle. Now the site is all warmth! and people! and signs everywhere that a new season has arrived.
Dragon boats are already in the water, with trainee crews digging in furiously as their trainers just as furiously shout instructions. Much more peacefully, racing sculls and kayaks are piled in colourful stacks at water’s edge.
I walk on, per my sort-of plan.
But not for very long.
I’m barely at the public fish market when detour signs send me inland. I had forgotten the mammoth construction project down there at water’s edge. Oops. Time to channel, yet again, the wisdom of a dear Toronto friend and co-founder of our two-woman Tuesday Walking Society. Every time we miscalculated and had to backtrack, she’d shrug. “We’re out for a walk,” she’d remind me. “It’s all walking.”
So I behave myself, navigate boring stretches that are nonetheless All Walking, and keep heading west, as close to the water as possible.
I am rewarded for all that good behaviour at the corner of West 1st and Burrard — just across the street from the point where (I’m pretty sure) I’ll be able to work my way down to the Seawall again. As I wait for the lights to change, I notice a little girl and her parents, also waiting.
I compliment her on her cat’s ears headband; we agree Cats Are The Best. She raises her hand, to show me the bouquet of flowers she has just picked. We further agree that Dandelions Are The Best. Red light turns green, and she scampers ahead toward Seaforth Peace Park, calling back as she goes: “Mummy! Look! More flowers!”
Her mum reminds her to pick only three, “and leave the rest for the bees and the birds.”
All this causes me to notice the chamomile blossoms scattered through the grass…
and also the craggy rock sculpture rising up from the grass. It is message-heavy.
First I read the plaque, describing this tribute by the Latin American community to the courage of their first wave of immigration (talk about the entangled nature of darkness and light)…
and then I read the incised recipe for Sopa Sur, “enjoyed all over Latin America.”
Iconic seafood soup, something I might not have discovered, but for a little girl with cat’s ears on her head.
(Is Sopa Sur part of your life? Have you comments, or a recipe to share? I’d love to hear.)
And then, yes, I do make my way back to the Seawall, and yes there are people and dogs and benches and blossoms and crows and gulls all around. And chamomile blossoms in the grass.
And, as I round the curve to the west end of Vanier Park, there is also the Blue Cabin…
the floating artist residency program, now moored in Heritage Harbour alongside the Vancouver Maritime Museum. On April 1st, it will welcome its first resident artist of the new season.
On round the next curve, on to Kitsilano Beach Park, where nobody is waiting for April first.
Dogs are in the water, or furiously chasing sticks. Humans are on the beach proper, though still well bundled up. The day may be warm, as early spring goes, but the temperature is only about 10C.
Then I see the one exception to all this prudent behaviour: a woman stripped to her bathing suit, explaining herself to a clearly amazed, and very fully clothed, passer-by.
Enough chat. Putting her body where her mouth was, she runs into the water and starts swimming.
I admire her, but I’m glad to be up here on the path. Where I also admire the beach volleyball net being slung into position.
It’s the last to go up, the other seven courts are already in full swing. (Full swing? I didn’t plan the pun, but let’s all enjoy it.)
Time for city sidewalks, I decide. I leave the park at its Cornwall St. border to head south on Yew. Smack on the corner, a combination I was not expecting.
Another unexpected combination, a few blocks farther south.
I finally meet the Thoughtful Dog!
Oh all right, Zen and dog are not woven into one package, not like the eyewear/espresso duo — but they are visually if not commercially paired, and that’s quite enough for me.
More city blocks, a break for lunch (avo-chicken sandwich plus butternut squash soup, yum), and after a while I’m on West 10th.
Here, near Hemlock, a fresh new camellia blossom showing all those buds how it’s done…
and here, at Birch, a lot of weary old skateboard tips,,,
that still provide, despite their age, a crisp, good-humoured edge to the volunteer-tended traffic circle and sidewalk gardens.
29 March 2025 – I’m still pursuing light, as a resource for coping with darkness. This time, not physical light, but emotional — small things I notice along the way that encourage, impress or just plain amuse me.
Truly small, truly everyday. That’s what I like most about them.
For example, the City’s network of bike lanes…
this one veering past a corner cafe’s turquoise “tiny free library” over there by the flower bed.
I check it out. At the top, the slogan “freely take, freely give, for the joy of sharing”; at the bottom, a bin marked “free dog toys/balls.” I do take a book (one of Reginald Hill’s old Dalziel & Pascoe series), knowing I’l be dropping it off again, one of these days.
Next corner over, a young woman with skis on her shoulder.
Still ski season at altitude — and available by public transit, all the way from downtown Vancouver. She’s not dressed for skiing today, but she could do it, if she wanted to.
Meanwhile, here at sea level…
the forsythia is in full bloom.
Skis and spring blossoms, all at the same time!
Two more blocks, and I’m startled to a full stop by this front gate notice.
Arguably this speaks to darkness, not light, in that it’s about bullying. On the other hand, it’s also all about defiance, and I like the thought of Old Wrinklies speaking up. (Being one myself.)
Another block or so, and a passing teenage girl, noticing my fixed attention, tracks my gaze with her own. We then wag heads at each other in mutual admiration…
for the preening window-framed cat. Feline living art.
More frames, more art, down by Cambie Street, where the fence around subway project construction is a display of an elementary school project.
Here’s my favourite, this child’s joke about the station due to be built at this very corner.
Across Broadway, north toward the water, under the Cambie Bridge ramps as I make my way to the False Creek Seawall. It’s mostly bleak under here, yes it is… but there’s always something.
I am not about to join them but I am delighted the club exists.
As I am to see — even if only in peripheral remnants — the splendid 2014 mural painted by Emily Gray plus 100 volunteers all over the Spyglass Place ferry dock.
Murals fade, other pleasures endure. Sitting on a log just off Hinge Park, for example, and letting the world go by.
A small act of public kindness, down by the Olympic Village dock. Someone lost track of her pretty straw hat…
and someone else has hung it high, to increase the chance its owner can find it again.
Turning south from the water back towards city streets, I’m cheered by the energy of a pair of junior skateboarders, even more so since one of them is a kick-ass little girl.
And I’m even more, even-more cheered to see them screech to a halt, joined by a slightly older girl on her own two legs.
What stops them? A sign. It blares, “What’s This?”, and they’ve decided to find out. Little boy reads it aloud, older girl hugs younger girl.
Having educated themselves, they zoom off. I promptly move in, to see for myself.
The sign tells me, and I tell you: this is not a ditch. “This bioswale collects and cleans one-third of the rainwater that falls on streets, plazas and other public land in Olympic Village.” All part of Vancouver’s rain city strategy.
One last small delight.
Right in front of me, as I wait for traffic lights to change, just a block from home.
Happy socks!
I am not tra-la-la. My clenched belly shivers with the darkness, all around. But neuroscience tells us that darkness is not the whole story, and noticing the whole story will help. “When you tilt toward the good, you’re not denying or resisting the bad. You’re acknowledging the whole truth, all the mosaic tiles of life…” (Rick Hanson, PhD, Buddha’s Brain.)
25 March 2025 – Politically, the world grows steadily darker. All the more reason to notice and embrace light, whenever and however it presents itself. It, too, is real, and it offers us courage and strength and joy.
I am giddy with it, this early-spring evening: temperature well into the teens, and each day longer than the one before.
It is 7:30 in the evening, and the sky is still bright. The crows have not yet flown home to Burnaby (mid-winter, they go through by 4:30 or so), and — look — golden sunlight still bounces off the library branch window opposite my building.
Here’s the source: the sun just dipping out of sight in the western sky, the sky itself warm with rosy-gold.
Over at Dude Chilling Park, just minutes later, women chat beneath a sky that has now lost its rosy-gold, but is still bright with pink and blue.
Daffodils offer their own gold to the sky, tall against the community garden fence. Warmth & light inform the scene: children romp just inside the fence, parents call encouragement from the far side of their allotment and, behind them, the west face of the school building is a-glow.
But by now, natural light is fading fast. Tree branches are black against the sky…
and it is street lights that illuminate these butterfly ornaments draped on a residential tree…
and it is the security light in someone’s yard that pops my own silhouette back at me from the directional arrow in this traffic circle.
Car lights glitter on the leaves of a street-side hedge…
residents’ lights tumble a visual waterfall through this apartment building…
and the entrance to a neighbouring building punches its shaft of light & colour out onto the street.
Only 45 minutes since I left my door, and artificial light, city light, is now dominant. I peer down an alley, looking for a bit of sky that is still itself, still wears its own colours.
16 March 2025 – If my 1 March post was a love-letter to urban clutter, this one might strike you as a love-letter to maritime clutter. At least, while still on the Vancouver side of Burrard Inlet.
I’m in the long approach to the Waterfront SeaBus Terminal, in the connector between Waterfront Station, with all its urban transit links, and the SeaBus Terminal proper, down at water level. It’s a sunny/cloudy/rain-splattered day, with the intervals of sunshine throwing long shadows across the walkway.
But where’s the promised clutter? you ask.
It’s coming.
I slow down. The next ferry will depart in 1 min. 27 sec. time (the count-down screen is counting), and I know I won’t get to the waiting room in time. Nor does it matter — the ferry after that is the one I want to take, the ones my north-shore friends will meet.
With no need to hurry, I look around.
There’s the Vancouver Harbour Heliport, caught in the V-slashes of these window frames, with a helicopter on the pad, and maritime clutter all around — a line-up of harbour cranes, stacks of shipping containers below their voracious grasp, and two crows on the light standard so you know you’re in Vancouver. Plus reflections dancing merrily on the window pane.
Either you think the reflections spoil the picture, or — like me — you enjoy them as part of the moment, more visual information jumping into the story.
Next window pane offers rain splatters as its contribution to maritime clutter, and the view of a laden freighter, just starting to make its way back up the Inlet toward the Pacific Ocean and its next port of call.
Low-hanging clouds in that scene as well, running horizontal streaks across the mountains beyond, and snowy peaks above all that. (Nature’s own clutter.)
More clouds, more containers, more cranes — all caught in a fleeting glimpse as the escalator rolls me past another window on my ride down to sea level.
The waiting room window shows me the back end of the ferry I missed, making her stately way past the nearest cranes…
and the scratched & splattered window of the ferry I catch rewards me with sun dogs that bounce silver across the water. (Brooded over by those cranes.) (And by pale reflections of overhead lights, here inside the ferry.)
No scratches in sight, once I’m off the ferry and halfway up Mount Seymour, going walkabouts with my friends. Rain drops, yes — but as sun showers on our heads, not on a window. Reflections, also — but as rain crystals that turn the winter moss to neon.
Just look at it!
We pass endless happy dogs, whose owners laugh when we apologize to the woofs that all we have to offer is adoration, not treats.
I point out a dramatic tree trunk, beside the path. Wow, says my friend; even more shredded than a few days ago. Those Pileated Woodpeckers have been busy!
Not to be outdone by hungry woodpeckers, we return to their place and show what hungry humans can do to a post-lunch treat of dark chocolate and dark coffee.
2 March 2025 – Long ago, I lived for a while in Peru. Only slightly less long ago, I lived for a while in Indonesia. And now, on this one afternoon here in Vancouver, I revisit each — in new physical experience, and in old memories as well.
1 – Bike to Baik
First, courtesy of the VPL (Vancouver Public Library) Staircase Sounds series of noon-hour musical events: a program of Indonesian gamelan music, performed by the Vancouver group Gamelan Bike Bike.
The name Bike Bike is a double, and bilingual, play on words.
In English, it nods to the fact that the musicians complement traditional gamelan instruments with ones they build themselves from old bicycle parts.
See? On the red table-tops: segments of old bike frames (left & far right) and bike sprockets (second from right).
Even their shirts, custom-designed and created in Indonesia, continue the theme, with bike chains and sprockets in amongst more traditional design elements.
The group of musicians is very good — and that is the second, bilingual, part of the play on words. In the Indonesian language, baik baik (virtually the same pronunciation) means exactly that: “very good!” (Literally, good-good.)
I sit for an hour, awash in the intricate beauty of the music as it pulses and swirls through this Vancouver space. Awash, also, in memories of another time and that other place.
Baik baik sekali. Saya senung sekali.
2 – to ¡Bueno!
And then, my head full of glorious music, I leave the glorious Central Library building (thank you, Moishe Safdie) and walk five blocks north to Silvestre (“gusto latino”) on Water Street in Gastown.
More precisely, this deli-bistro offers “gusto peruano,” for it was founded by Peruvian immigrants and is dedicated to Peruvian cuisine and ambiente. I’ve never been here before, but I’ve checked the menu online, and I know what I want: an alfajor dessert (two shortbread rounds, filled with dulce de leche and topped with icing sugar) and a mug of chicha morada (a purple corn drink, slightly tart and refreshing).
The young server treats me to widened eyes and a dimpled smile when I speak with her in Spanish. And I smile — oh, how I smile — when she delivers my order.
Odd thing, memory.
Tracking down alfajores in Vancouver had become an obsession; chicha morada was an afterthought. But now, as I sit with the physical reality again before me and in my mouth… the power is in the drink.
1 March 2025 – Clutter? “Juxtapositions” is more accurate, also better PR, but I suspect there’s some kind of rule against using five-syllable words in a title.
So Urban Clutter it is. There’s a lot to be said for it, by whichever name — so many possibilities, all piled atop each other! The pile-up tells stories, and it both sparks and rewards curiosity.
At least, that’s the effect on me, as I stand at Davie & Richards, en route an Urban Treat — a noon-time performance at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. While my feet wait for the light to change, my eyes say, “Look at that!”
So I do.
It’s nothing special, it’s just… it’s just very urban. Tram lines overhead; traffic signals to one side; and, framed by both, the residential towers that lie behind Emery Barnes Park and before Helmcken Street.
The Shiamak dance performance is wonderful. Afterwards I adapt their “Have Feet Will Dance” slogan to my own “Have Feet Will Walk,” and start north on Seymour. (North-ish, downtown streets are on a slant, but I’ll spare you the precisions.) The day is balmy, I’m happy, and I decide to walk right to West Pender, where I’ll catch a bus back home.
But then I get distracted, and my simple plan goes all fractal. Blame it on urban clutter.
Before I even reach Nelson, I’m laughing at this literal sign of our politico-cultural times.
Left on Nelson, right on Granville, and I’m up against the busy construction work beneath one of the street’s stubborn theatrical survivors: the Vogue. It’s a 1941 movie theatre (now event venue), built in Art Deco/Art Moderne style. As you can see.
I veer onto Smithe just past the Vogue Theatre. No particular reason for the change of direction — but suddenly here I am, just before Seymour, at the entrance to Ackery’s Alley.
The alley backs the Orpheum Theatre on Seymour, and celebrates the venue’s long (and continuing) history of live performances. It was painted and generally spiffed up in 2018, the idea being to welcome pedestrian as well as the existing delivery-truck traffic. I had recently arrived in town, walked it then, and yes, it sparkled.
It hasn’t had much maintenance since, and it’s a lot grubbier.
But it’s still in pedestrian use and, with its strong lines and commercial functionality, it is very Downtown Right Now.
Out the other end at Robson, where a window sign apparently invites me to dial down my consumerism.
Well… not exactly. This is the window of a cannabis shop, which prides itself on bargain prices. So: keep spending money, just spend it with us! (And discover the wonders of our products.)
Since I still plan a quick ride home, I take to Granville again, heading for the bus stop at West Pender. But then, when I reach Pender, I look farther down Granville and I am again distracted — beguiled! lured! tickled! — by urban clutter.
It’s the dome. I start wondering about the dome.
I could always walk one more block and check it out — but what fun is that? Especially when, just before I reach that next corner, I can instead dive into Alley Oop, the first of the downtown alleys to be spiffed up, back in 2016.
Also grubby by now, but it does have that hanging sphere at the far end.
Which rewards my head-tilt very nicely. Geometry at work.
This brings me to Seymour and West Hastings, with Waterfront Station in the distance and this building opposite, whose upturned lip always makes me think of whale baleen. (That frog-splattered white car, even closer, is a gift from the Traffic Light Gods.)
By now I’m well off-track for the mystery dome. I correct course and walk west on Hastings. This time the urban clutter offers me a distant view of the Marine Building at Burrard, framed against glass towers, and a close-up of elaborate lanterns and trim on another heritage building right next to me.
The bus stop at Granville is a reminder that the cruise ship terminal is nearby and, in season, its passenger loads wreak havoc with local traffic.
Perversely enough, I now head away from the mystery dome. Instead, I follow the raised Granville sidewalk all the way north to the lookout at Burrard Inlet.
Small but satisfying, this little plaza lies between the East Convention Centre (with its “sails”) and the cruise ship terminal on one side, and, on the other…
harbour cranes, Waterfront Station, the SeaBus terminal, train tracks and a helicopter landing pad.
About face!
Back up the raised sidewalk I go, now aware that this entire four-building foot print — including the mystery dome — comprises the Sinclair Centre. I knew this, I really did. It just took a while to reconcile my memories of this once-busy office/service/retail complex, with the boarded-up reality of right now.
??? They look like giant condoms, ready for action. What is going on in there?
I don’t know, is the answer to my own question. The complex seems mostly closed, and I later read online that a massive redevelopment proposal has been under review. Is work now underway, or becalmed? I can’t tell.
Whichever, it is a sad sight.
Walking the West Hastings side of the complex toward Howe, I pass a medallion face looking suitably distressed. As it should. The wooden door is in good condition, but the plaque beneath the medallion has been hacked away.
Corner of Howe, I take one last look at the dome that started my long, happy loop-about through all that urban clutter.
Then, satisfied, I finally board my bus for home.
There’s one last delight, as we roll south on Main Street, and I manage to grab a shot through the bus window.
The Pacific Central train station is in the background, but who cares. I’m focused on the red & white “flag” now installed above the pub entrance, right at the cross-street. It is yet another literal sign of our politico/cultural times.
The final, perfect detail? The name of that cross-street is… National Street.
26 February 2025 – Oh, that pesky old Law of Unintended Consequences.
You know? You do X, to bring about Y… and then instead of basking in the delights of Y, you find yourself lumbered with Z,T and a raggedy bit of M.
For example:
On June 28, 1914, Bosnian-Serb student Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie as they were being driven through the streets of Sarajevo.
He meant to protest the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
He did not mean to precipitate World War I.
And for example:
In 1938, the Australian government introduced cane toads to the country.
They meant to control pest beetles in Queensland’s sugar cane crop.
They did not mean to introduce a new pest, which has since spread all the way to northern Western Australia. “This great toad, immune from enemies, omnivorous in its habits and breeding all year round, may become as great a pest as the rabbit or cactus” — National Museum of Australia.
And also for example:
In the 1950s, the heroine of I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly — words by Rose Bonne, music by Canadian folk writer Alan Mills, sung by Burl Ives, animated by the NFB — launched herself on a swallowing spree.
She only meant to get rid of the fly (“that wriggled and tiggled and jiggled inside her”).
But when that spree culminated in a horse? “She’s dead, of course.”
And finally for example:
Right here and now, the Orange Thug’s tariffs are meant to destroy Canadian sovereignty.
But as this poster, now widespread in our grocery stores, suggests…
and product shelves reinforce…
in one aisle after another…
hmmm, maybe some Unintended Consequences are already kicking in.
(Says I, who happened to need a new jar of honey, and came home with this one, you betcha.)
20 February 2025 – The month and the day pose the question:
Q: We think about tourist attractions in all their high-season dazzle — but what are they like, in off-season drizzle?
A: I head for Granville Island, magnet for tourists and locals alike. The month is off-season, the day is off-weekend, and the weather is definitely drizzle.
I leave the bus with the driver’s tourist-friendly patter still in my ears: Follow Anderson Street under Granville Bridge, it will lead you onto the island, and when you want to return to wherever you came from, the bus stop is right across the street — see? just over there.
Good patter, but not needed today. Only one possible tourist alights with me.
Anderson Street, its car lanes and sidewalks routinely thronged with traffic, is virtually empty.
All those rental bikes, still locked in their slots!
Ditto for the rental water bikes, tied up in Broker’s Bay.
But mid-week off-season has its uses. It is a good time for maintenance, for example, whether to Granville Bridge overhead…
or, inside Net Loft boutiques like this hat shop…
a good time for staff to catch up on pesky chores, and have a bit of a chat.
Despite some people eyeing the hats, this saleswoman agrees “it’s pretty quiet,” and she can finally spend a few moments scratching the stubborn label off a vase she wants to use for display purposes. We gossip amiably about my favourite hat brand (Tilley, that’s a plug), I resist her wheedling to try on one of the latest arrivals, and off I go.
To have another bit of amiable gossip in the Market Kitchen Store.
About cats.
“What’s with cats this month?” asks the saleswoman, puzzled. “We always have these mini-spatulas, but suddenly there’s cat themes all over the place.” I concur, and tell her about the book I had just noticed on prominent display in Paper-Ya — entitled What Do Cats Want? and written (says the blurb) by “Japan’s leading cat doctor.”
Despite respectably full parking lots, the Island’s streets and plazas are nearly empty. The fire pit blazes away outside Tap & Barrel, but any customers have parked their bottoms inside, warm & dry.
Kiosk tent-tops glisten…
a hardy duo hunch shoulders slightly as they check the ferry-dock map…
a hardy gull claims a parking lot perch…
and, hardy as I may personally be, this puddle tells me the obvious:
the drizzle is on its way to downpour.
And I say, Basta.
A wet day in the off-season is a very good time to visit the shops — you can chat and look about in a more leisurely way — but, finally, wet is wet, and it’s getting wetter.
One last discovery, as I walk back south on Anderson, heading for the bus stop.
This poster.
It’s the perfect end to this little story, is it not?
(On the bus I admire a child’s unicorn raincoat, complete with twisted horn on the hood. But… no. That would launch a whole other story.)
"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 