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.
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…
6 May 2025 – Today our Prime Minister met with the President of that giant neighbour to the south, an event that gives us Canadians much material for reflection.
For example, we reflect upon the fact that our Prime Minister had to — yet again — explain that Canada is an independent and sovereign country.
Sigh.
Fortunately, this bright sunny day gives me other, happier, and less surreal, objects for reflection. In fact, the sunshine causes the reflection to be done for me. I don’t even have to think. All I have to do is look.
I am in an alley just west of Main Street, between 7th and 6th avenues, where the brightly painted west wall, a remnant of the 2017 Mural Festival…
with the help of adjacent buildings and some H-frame hydro poles, throws bright reflections into every glass surface opposite.
For example, wall plus next-door building…
wall plus neighbour plus an H-frame…
blocks of mini-reflections above a parkade entrance, with equally strong light reflections on the laneway below…
even the parkade door itself! and…
and even the corner of a decidedly uninspired building, having itself a dance with that bit of H-frame.
Cheered and amused, I walk on down to False Creek and a lunch date with friends.
Right here, in this one downtown alley in one city in one province in our independent, sovereign country.
23 April 2025 – My mind has created a very clear plan for the morning.
Follow the Quebec Street bioswale — not a ditch! a rainwater gathering/purifying system! — to Science World, down there at False Creek…
do the interview; walk my usual “Cambie Loop” to and over the bridge; and then zigzag eastward back home.
I do the interview. (The Mystery Interview. Be patient, a post will follow.) I start walking west along the False Creek Seawall.
All according to plan.
Suddenly, where Carrall St. butts into the Seawall, my feet execute a sharp right-turn. They don’t even inform my mind, let alone ask permission. They just take mind (and the rest of me) hostage, and execute their own plan.
Away we go. I find myself walking north on Carrall.
I decide not to argue: this could be interesting! The route offers a tidy cross-town slice past Andy Livingstone Park, through Chinatown, on into the Downtown East Side (DTES) and Gastown, all the way to Water Street with Burrard Inlet just beyond.
Poignant, powerful street art at West Pender, by the impressive street artist and DTES resident/advocate, Smokey D.
“It’s by Smokey D,” I hear two street kids say to each other, their voices full of respect. The City agrees. In tribute to his concern for others and use of his skills to inform and empower others, in 2023 Vancouver proclaimed March 11 — his birthday — to be Smokey D Day.
Another downtown symbol at Water and Cambie streets, this one much happier in mood: Raymond Saunders’ 1977 Steam Clock, still puffing steam and, in another 10 minutes, due to mark 12-noon with the opening bars of O Canada.
By now my mind fully supports what my feet set in motion: this is a promising route! I even manage to rediscover the Silvestre café and reacquaint myself with its Peruvian menu — another mug of Chicha Morada (purple corn drink) but this time, a Chicharron sandwich (pork belly) rather than an Alfajor dessert.
At Richards Street, my feet graciously allow my mind some say in what happens next. Continue west another block or two? Or turn south right here? Right here, says my mind, and my feet pivot accordingly.
Yet more patriotic fervour in the Macleod’s window at Richards & West Pender…
and appropriately vintage in style, as befits this rare, used and antiquarian bookstore.
I cross Dunsmuir, where signage informs me that this next stretch of Richards is part of the City’s “blue-green rainwater system.”
The last panel of the sign is an illustration of the pavers involved in the system. The caption asks, “Do they remind you of water flowing towards the tree?”
I step out into the street, check the pavers.
Yes, they do.
Another happy rediscovery, a place I can never find on purpose. I just have to, literally, walk into it…
the joyous, multi-level Rainbow Park at Richards & Smithe.
Getting closer to False Creek with every step!
On past Emery Barnes Park at Davie, and then across Pacific Blvd., right to the tumbling fountains of George Wainborn Park, which slopes down to the Creek.
Eastward along the False Creek Seawall, past a swimming dog (and ball-tossing owner)…
and then I’m beneath the towering girders at the David Lam ferry dock. Each girder base is incised with a different story of time & place.
This one commemorates the Great Fire of 1886…
when, on June 17, an authorized clearing fire on CPR property blazed out of control and destroyed the infant city, whose wooden structures were no match for the wind and flames. In the words of one survivor: “The city did not burn, it simply melted before the fiery blast.”
And then I walk some more, on past the Cambie Bridge, on along to Coopers Mews, with its symbolic barrels on high. At this point, mind, feet and the rest of me all agree on our course of action.
We follow the Mews to Pacific Blvd., and catch a bus for home.
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.
It seems to work. I don’t know how many eyeglasses they’re selling, but the café end of things is doing a brisk trade.
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.
This invitation, for example.
“Le 6 am club”? “Communauté de course”? Later, I look it up. In both official languages, the website invites early risers to get together once a week, at a given location, for a group run.
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.)
14 February 2025 – Not viciously frozen-frozen — not like most of the rest of Canada, right now — just the benign Vancouver version of frozen.
Just cold enough, and cold enough long enough, that snow still covers the ground, and…
even Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park lies still and silent beneath a layer of ice.
It’s that stillness, that hold-the-breath absolute stillness, that I remember from the colder winters I knew in eastern Canada. It is as much a mood as a physical sensation, and it is with me again as I walk the Lost Lagoon trail, heading from the Burrard Inlet side over to English Bay.
Snow on the ground, long shadows high-contrast black against the snow, snow-shards sitting atop the Lagoon instead of melting into it…
and even an “Ice Unsafe” notice pounded into the ground, this being one of the very rare occasions it needs to be pulled out of storage and put to use.
My trail leads me away from the shoreline, into the woods, shows me yet again how much bright beauty is to be had, when winter sun blazes in the sky.
It sparks against moss on a tree branch…
against this tree trunk…
and it spotlights an impromptu snowman, shining in the field beyond a wayside bench. The bench is currently irrelevant; the snowman is, literally, in his element.
Signage tells me I’m walking through the Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden. Sure enough, next to this magnificent old tree stump (bearing what may be the cut of a long-ago lumberjack)…
I see valiant little rhodo buds, already peeking out at the world. It seems madness to me, but I’m not about to argue with Mother Nature.
Ice, snow, stillness… and then… and then I’m out the other end of the trail.
Usually I drop down to the Seawall. Today I stay here, on higher ground, taking in a broader perspective. I walk my way back into the city, still with water to one side, but with towers and urban life to the other.
On down Beach Avenue, and the long view opens up before me: Morton Park with its A-Maze-ing Laughter bronze sculptures, its palm trees, its geese, its flags, and, as backdrop, Doug Coupland’s Sunset Beach Love Letter, the mural embracing that refurbished apartment building toward the right.
I cut across a corner of Morton Park. It rewards me with a closer look at the geese, the laughing bronze figures beyond the palms, the flags snapping in the breeze…
and the colours and textures of a sleeping Canada Goose.
A utility box at Denman and Pendrell — all splashy with an Andrew Briggs’ mural — tells me I’m seriously back in the city.
I have plans for Denman Street! Somewhere along here there’s an Aussie pastry-pie place, and I want to find it again. I pass a whole globe’s-worth of culinary invitations along the way, but I keep walking, and I am rewarded.
Because here it is: a café-cum-hole-in-the-wall named Peaked Pies.
The menu offers a range of Savoury Pies (from kangaroo meat to vegan) which, should you choose to pay the premium, can be transformed into Peaked Pies. The term is descriptive. The “peak” is what results when you take the pie as base, and then pile on mashed potatoes + mushy peas + torrents of gravy.
Like this:
I almost can’t believe I agreed to all that — but I did, didn’t I?
Later, back home, I could have cropped this image to just the PP, but I want you to see the rest. It shows how neighbourly this little café was, when I happened to drop in, and I suspect that’s typical.
The elbow in the background belongs to a young mother, murmuring loving silliness at her baby in between mouthfuls of her own PP; baby is gurgling approval back at her. The helmet belongs to the Aging Geezer sitting farther down this communal bench from me, who is deep in conversation with the Younger Tablemate chance-seated next to him. Each, from their very different age-point, is encouraging the other to follow their dreams as they navigate their respective next stage of life. When they part, it is with reciprocal thanks for the conversation.
My peaked pie is good, true comfort food on a nippy day. And the mood in that café is a comfort as well.
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.
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.
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.)
"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 