All posts in category Walking

Farmer’s Island

11 June 2026 – Still on the Magdalen Islands, leaving very early tomorrow morning by ferry for Souris, PEI. But for the next 9 hours, I’m still here, and I’m still all about here.

What I really want to do — and will do — is take you with me to Farmer’s Island. That’s not the official name, but by the end of this post you’ll see why I have invented it.

But first, a few quick moments from everything else I’ve been doing since my last post.

* My solo walk to Le Bassin, from La Salicorne, the inn where we’ve been staying on Île de la Grande Entrée, down to Bassin aux Huîtres (Oyster Bay). It took me down a pebble/dirt path, with boards for the boggy bits…

past various exercise stations off to one side…

out to the bay…

with more athletic options, lounge chairs, roped-off areas where they are propagating more Myriques des îles (Morella pensylvanica, Northern Bayberry), a native species but one that needs encouragement.

* Our group walk along the Camarine Trail, in the Pointe de l’Est National Wildlife Area on Grosse Île. Here we walk a sandy path, for this is a sand dune environment…

but one where forest is slowly, steadily encroaching…

although — as we discover in the part of the trail called The Soup Bowl…

there are massive sand blow-outs still being created that continue to re-contour the land.

* And then there’s the sunset over the water!

It’s an easy walk from the opposite side of La Salicorne, to watch the sun apparently drop into the waters of Havre de la Grande Entrée, and it’s a nightly ritual for many people. I can see why.

* More fiery colour, for a different reason: our visit to Le Fumoir d’Antan (The Traditional Smoke House), on Île du Havre aux Maisons.

Those are herring, slowly turning copper-coloured, over the wood fires below.

* Same island, different emphasis: cheese. We visit La Fromagerie Pied-de-Vent, which is able to create delicious, artisanal, award-winning cheeses thanks to…

their herd of Vache Canadienne (the Canadian Cow), a now rare breed that first came to Quebec when it was still New France.

* We walk a beach near Pointe aux Loups (not wolves, but loups-marins, or seals)…

and marvel at the water-scoured caves in the sandstone cliffs.

* Later we visit the sweeping 8.5 km sandy beach on Old Harry Island…

prosaically known in English as Old Harry Beach, but more descriptively known in French as la Plage de la Grande Échouerie. I had to look this word up, I had no idea. Here’s what it means: a littoral area, rocky or sandy, that serves as a gathering place for marine mammals (e.g. seal, walrus). Aren’t you glad to learn that?

I’ve just whooshed you through everything until today. Today we took the 45-minute ferry ride from Cap-aux-Meules over to Farmer’s Island. Only they don’t call it that. Every map, every conversation, knows it as Île d’Entrée — Entry Island. Just tuck that “farmer” reference aside for the moment. We’ll get back to it.

Our group is just 17 of the people on this full-load ferry, about to leave Cap-aux-Meules. The others are, far as any conversations I have, tourists from mainland Quebec. With their babies, and with their woofs. I meet Willow, a Scotch (not Irish) Setter and her owner from the Saguenay area, and the appropriately-named Angus, a Westie (“Bien sûr ‘Angus.’ Il est écossais!”).

It’s a holiday mood. Everybody is clearly delighted to be making this trip.

And here is the local museum’s model of the island receiving this accolade.

We pull in to the harbour you can see in the model above…

and everybody, le gang Salicorne and everybody else, either heads into Chez Brian Josey (“OPEN”) for supplies…

or starts hoofing uphill toward their various destinations. No busses, strictly foot-power.

I lolly-gag, I do, and pretty soon I’m wandering along on my own. Past a pile of lobster traps…

past endless sweeps of the distinctive Magdalen dandelion, tall and so densely petalled…

past a lighthouse…

past a long view of the little Anglican church on the hill, and a sign whose lettering you can’t read without spreading the image. DON’T DO THAT YET. Not yet.

I turn a corner, onto the school-house road, and take in a long view of “La Big Hill”…

deserving its name, at 185 metres high — not only highest on this island, highest in all the Magdalens.

And here I am, at the school…

except it is no longer a school. It is now a museum — and doesn’t that tell you something, about demographics on this island.

I shall now let the Entry Island Historical Museum speak for itself.

Permanent residents now, in 2026, are 50 or so, and aging. Numbers swell to 120 or so in summer, when younger family members return for the season.

That was the 1960s. Still, even then, a remote and poorly serviced life.

I relate to this one! The signage places it before my time, but in my time — in my life as a small child in the Laurentians village of Morin Heights, my mum hung laundry out to dry in winter and brought it in “frozen hard.” I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the sight that so fascinated me as a child: stiffly tented frozen sheets slowly thawing and collapsing into soft piles on the floor.

Remember that photo of La Big Hill? Most of our group truck off to go climb it, their lunch boxes in their back packs. A few of us say an unabashed “No thanks,” and stay below. But we don’t just sit there like lumps. A companion and I set off for a gentler, and much more horizontal, walk of our own.

It gives us a closer view of the Big Hill…

before we veer off to the left, and find a pretty satisfactory long-view-over-water of our own.

And now — and about time too, you may think — I shall introduce you to Farmer.

Meet Farmer.

Part-Clydesdale, indeed a farm horse here on Entry Island back in the early 1920s — and one who now has a sign pointing to his burial site (scroll back to that photo with the Anglican church in the distance, and read the sign). Not only that, Stompin’ Tom Connors wrote a song about him (which Farmer entirely deserved, though I’ll add that Stompin’ Tom was married to a woman from Entry Island).

Here’s the story. Well, here’s the version we heard, and details vary, as befits a legend. So don’t sweat the details, because the core facts are true and every legend earns some embroidery.

When a new foal was born on Richard McLean’s farm, and emerged with a white F-shaped blaze on his black face, the McLean children promptly named him Farmer. They were devoted to the horse, and vice-versa. All went well until McLean, who had a bit of a gambling problem, got in over his head during a game on Grosse Île, wagered the horse on the next throw of the dice — and lost. He paid his debt. It being winter, he brought the horse from Entry Island to his new owner via the “ice bridge” that formed every year, and gave Entry Islanders access to the other islands.

The McLean children were devastated. Farmer wasn’t too happy either because, one day when the gate was left unlatched, he took off.

He then walked the entire stretch-C length of the chain of islands, from Grosse Île over the top of that northern curve, down the beaches and long middle stretch, and around the bottom southern curve, right out past Havre Aubert, to water’s edge facing Entry Island. He smelled Entry Island on the wind and — it now being summer, no ice bridge available — plucked up his courage, plunged into the water, and swam home.

Here’s the map. Trace it for yourselves.

The new Grosse Île owner agreed that Farmer deserved to live out his days back home. That is where he stayed, and where he now is buried and honoured.

On the ferry-ride back to Cap-aux-Meules, the steward asks our boat-load of day-trippers if we enjoyed ourselves. “Ouais!” we roar. Fine, he says, and did you all learn about Farmer? Silence, blank faces (except for our little group). And so the steward tells the story. With gusto. At the end, there is a round of applause.

He adds one more apocryphal, but who cares, detail — every legend needs its apocrypha. “Richard McLean was so moved by the horse’s courage and devotion that he never gambled again. He was cured.”

So that’s Farmer’s Island for you. I yield to the temptation to add… maybe if Farmer could do the impossible, maybe the island can as well? Maybe, somehow, it will rebuild to a stable population that can sustain a school and a community?

Probably not. But I like the idea.

*****

P.S.: read about Farmer here … and listen to “A Horse Named Farmer” by a current singer here (I can’t find any Stompin’ Tom original online, but maybe you can).

P.P.S. Yikes, by now I’ll be leaving this morning, 4 hours from now.


4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 11 June 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Nature, photography, Travel, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 11 June 2026

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Quebec (BC & QC)

5 June 2026 – I had a plan. This wasn’t it.

Plan was, a minimalist little post titled Tended & Wild, contrasting much-pampered Tended…

with plucky little Wild…

and noting that, much as I appreciate well-tended gardens, my heart is with the spindly alley plant smack up against a grubby window with wonky blinds.

That was the plan.

But then I zagged right, landed myself on Quebec Street, kept walking south, crossed East 19th, and came up against The Fence.

The Fence! The Fence of happy memories! The Fence I can never find on purpose! The Fence with its — admittedly now deteriorating — wildly exuberant artwork. Like this:

And this:

A block-long demonstration of this identity:

I toss Tended/Wild aside, and plan a little tribute to Quebec Street.

I keep walking Quebec (BC), right until it swerves west…

and morphs into East 24th Avenue.

When I turn back north, I decide to follow, not Quebec, but, let’s call it, Back of Quebec — the alley beyond Quebec Street.

And then I laugh. All this is the perfect tease for posts to come, next week and all month long.

Because.

Because tomorrow I will exchange Quebec (BC) for Quebec (QC)…

in a two-flight bounce from Pacific-coast Vancouver to mid-St. Lawrence Quebec City.

The next day, one more bounce will take me to the real Back of Quebec…

this red-tinted archipelago beyond mainland Quebec, poised in triangulation with PEI and Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean — islands that, despite their location, are part of Quebec.

The Magdalen Islands.

Les Îles de la Madeleine. I’ll be staying on Île de la Grande Entrée, but exploring more widely. Then, next Friday, I’ll take the ferry from Cap-aux-Meules and follow the dotted line to Souris, PEI.

After that? After that, the adventure continues. I’ll keep you posted.

7 Comments
by icelandpenny on 5 June 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, photography, street art, Travel, Vancouver, Walking
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https://icelandpenny.com/2026/06/05/quebec-bc-qc/

Playing With Red & Green

24 May 2026 – Mostly red. One great swirl of red.

The title of this 1981 steel sculpture (Alan Chung Hung) is Spring. Of course it is! Even with that bit of temporary fencing on the left, we can see that the structure is a spring, a handsome great spring that earns its keep — or would have us believe it earns its keep, holding up the second level of Robson Square.

I play along.

See? There’s a sturdy spring end, doing its job.

I’m used to this particular joke, so my attention moves on, enjoys the play of sculpture with context: the light, the shadows, the plaza lines of Robson Square, the hints of the BC Provincial Law Courts above, the stripe of green shrubbery, the bicycles.

I move in, start prowling, curious to see the play from different angles.

Peer low: glimpses of that upper level, one fragment of the magic on display over my head, the marriage of Arthur Erickson‘s architecture with Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s landscape architecture to create the flowing, harmonious Law Courts whole.

Peer high: a view the other way, back toward downtown city towers.

Come closer, peer through the spiral — and frame another photographer. (Photographing the architecture, please note; not himself.)

Come even closer and, in all this sunlight, the uniform gloss of the red starts to break up.

Come even closer than that, and my eye starts telling me lies. Look! it says; alternating twists of silver & red! My brain knows this isn’t true, and my eye doesn’t care. It sees what it sees. Or… “sees.”

Time to back up a little? Restore agreement between eye & brain?

Still close, but at a different angle. All the spirals are once again red. Set off by the green of that modest, meticulously placed, line of shrubs-in-tubs.

One more re-angle, and now the spirals and their reflections bounce back and forth across the line of shrubs. I imagine an invisible tennis ball of light rays, flashing across that net of visible green…

And then, I walk on.

Deliberately one street over, now southbound on Howe…

where a cascade of Oberlander greenery washes my eye clean of all that red.

9 Comments
by icelandpenny on 24 May 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 24 May 2026

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After the Laughter

5 May 2026 – We meet in among the 14 bronze statues that comprise the A-Maze-ing Laughter art installation in Morton Park. The statues are all laughing…

and so is every visitor, which means the statues fulfill their objective: to spread joy.

Fun as they are, they are our rendezvous, not our destination.

We take ourselves a bit farther west & north, and join the Comox-Helmcken Greenway pretty well where it starts, at Chilco Street just outside Stanley Park. Seawall to the north (along Burrard Inlet), Seawall to the south (along English Bay / False Creek) — but what if you’re stubborn enough to want a city-street path across town?

You put your wheels, or your feet, onto the Greenway. That’s what.

It is well-developed between Stanley Park and Hornby Street, more concept than reality from Hornby to Pacific Blvd. at the False Creek end — but well worth the hoof when (ingrate that you are) you’re a little tired of all those sparkling waves.

Out here in the west end, the pedestrian/cyclist amenities are well-established:

e.g. bike lanes, freshly painted.

e.g. sidewalk art, almost freshly chalked (we comply, giggling).

e.g. bright new spring growth, glowing on every tree and shrub.

e.g. volunteer-tended corner gardens, part of the City’s Green Streets program.

e.g. murals on the walls of Lord Roberts Elementary School (this particular section, Dizzy Dancers, the work of the kids, who first threw their silhouettes on the wall, and artist Steve Hornung).

e.g. a multi-component art installation, Triumph of the Technocrat, punching up the grounds of a high-end rental building at Broughton, with a corner sculpture…

a flowing watercourse…

and even an Xs & Os table…

conceived by Reece Terris, and an equally flowing narrative poem all along the watercourse by Greg Snider.

e.g. alcoves with benches, chairs, greenscape & inventive hardscape — here bicycle wheels.

e.g. whimsy-artsy bird houses up above allotment gardens. (My companion sees a real, live bird fly into one of them.)

And then.

And then the Greenway changes.

We cross Hornby, we’re now on Helmcken, and we hit gritty Granville Street.

The Regal Hot (look beneath the traffic signal box) was impressive in its 1910 day, and still wears its heritage Art Deco architecture, but it is now better-known for its SRO (single-room occupancy) notoriety.

That said, things are changing — which makes this stretch of the cross-town walk as interesting, as valid, as the attractive part out west. SROs are being decommissioned, proposals for new projects are being presented. This is not a good-news story for everyone: if the SROs badly failed the marginal community they were meant to serve, fancy new developments won’t solve our housing crisis either. No, this is not necessarily good news, but it is all part of the city story.

Now solo, I carry on east past Granville, past that shape-shifting story; onward to a story of revival and glitter. I’m about to drop down the slope into Yaletown, with its boutiques and its artisan-everything and its cafés & restos and, yes…

its bright pink parasols at Hamilton Street.

Yet another block east, corner of Mainland, and I stare in amazement at one of the street’s mani-pedi establishments. My mind flips back to my friend’s comment, as we read the Triumph of the Technocrat text. “I understand every single word,” said this extremely well-educated person. “I just don’t understand what those words mean, all together.”

Same thing here. “Russian manicure?” I ask myself. “Authentic or otherwise?” I have no idea. This is so not the real me! In fact, anybody reading this who knows the Real Me is by now in fits of laughter.

As am I. The amusement carries me another few blocks, right down to Pacific Blvd., False Creek, and my route home. Laughter started the walk; laughter ends it.

,

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by icelandpenny on 5 May 2026  •  Permalink
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Walking the Dogleg

17 April 2026 – “Dogleg” is not its name. It will not answer to Dogleg. It is the Arbutus Greenway — the 9-ish km asphalt pathway that lies on old railway land between the Fraser River and False Creek, and runs alongside Arbutus Street most of the way.

I will be walking northward and I join it well north, at West 16th (just opposite the word “transportation” on that sign), so after a short straight stretch on north I’ll follow it around the curve to the east. I’ll walk the dogleg, in other words.

Major intersections with cross-streets are well signposted and have cheerful amenities. Here at 16th…

they include bright seating, a mural on the utility box and (on the right) a metal free-library box that, at the moment, offers both Fall On Your Knees, the 1996 classic by Ann-Marie MacDonald and The Intelligence of Dogs by Stanley Coren. Four generations of Cape Breton family drama vs canine IQ, take your pick.

My pick is to start walking, and I do — though I stop again almost immediately, transfixed by this bold, emphatic, but not-quite-thought-through call for civic good behaviour.

Oh, that pesky “G”!

Several blocks on, I’m approaching both 11th Avenue and, beyond that, the mammoth subway construction project on Broadway (aka 9th Ave) that will end here at Arbutus.

Worlds collide. Construction and, I assume, a detour lie ahead of me, but meanwhile, here on my right-hand side: that white building, offering yet more public-storage space; the orange sign, advertising a personal training studio; and, see the cream building in front of that line of grey townhouses?

I detour off-piste to check it out. Its wonderful art-deco details are testimony to its construction 1932-34, and a reminder that only government was building anything in those depression years. This is the Bessborough Armoury, home to the 15th Field Artillery Regiment. (They are recruiting, BTW. Just thought I’d point that out.)

Back on-piste, but not for long. Of course we can’t walk straight through the Broadway Subway Project!

I exit one block early, and stand at the corner of 11th & Arbutus Street, pondering my next steps. At least I get to choose! See the little bulldog?

He is now being towed quite firmly north on Arbutus. A moment earlier, I overheard their street-corner contest of wills. Dog: “Whine-whine-whine-whine” [and tug-tug-tug on the leash]. Owner: “No, we are not visiting the pet store today. Come along.” [Sharp snap on the leash.] Sure enough, there is a pet store, immediately south of the intersection.

Unlike the dog, I have no need to make my case. I do not need to justify crossing Arbutus to walk one block farther west on 11th. It looks green over there, and inviting, and unknown. I follow my whim.

I bet you agree it was a whim worth following. Look how pretty it is, viewed from Yew, just one street over. Equally comfy with the next whim to cross my mind, I now turn north on Yew.

I walk on up to Broadway. I cross Broadway (safely beyond the construction project). And, still following Yew…

I discover I have wandered myself onto the official Greenway detour route.

Soon the detour ends. I am back on the Greenway and, like this walker ahead of me, almost at the dogleg curve.

‘Round the curve, and we have gardens and greenery on all sides. Here to the north, almost at Maple Street, the Kitsilano Community Garden.

Also north side, and immediately across Maple, this bulletin board (I am most taken with the encouragement to grow my own urban wheat and mill my own flour)…

which is smack against the boundary fence for Urban Farmer, an organization that has been encouraging urbanites to grow/compost/recycle for almost fifty years. Even their garden gates are a joy, constructed from rusty old rebar and implements…

and chock-full of jokes, when you get close enough.

This squirrel, for example.

I love his ingeniously bushy tail — but, above all, I love the fact that he is clutching a nut.

Broad asphalt pathway, bordered on the right by a verge of ragged grass and beyond that, a succession of garden allotments. Peering down the middle of all these allotments is a delight. The cityscape entirely falls away.

Some have no signage, some an individual name, and some — like this one — self-identify at the broader community level.

I take this photo, amused to see that the Canadian Pacific Ltd. sign behind it has been selectively painted out. Through the white paint, you can still read old black letters: private property, no trespassing.

Ohhhh, sigh. I don’t know the details, I just know they are profuse. This whole Greenway lies on old CPR railway land, purchased from CPR by the City in 2016 and subject to lengthy, tangled legal disputes both before & since. Read all about it here, in a space wonderfully titled Participedia. The analysis argues that this particular “rails to trails” project is in fact de-railed, with ambitious City plans stalled and nothing achieved but all this placeholder asphalt. Meanwhile, it claims — citing Cypress Community Garden as an example — individuals and community groups enjoy the freedom this limbo status offers them, to do their own gardening projects. Not official, not recognized, but not exactly officially unrecognized, either.

Or so I gather.

All I know for sure is that it’s messy. Still, for individuals walking/biking/rolling on through, it is also very enjoyable, albeit far from what Civic planners want to offer us.

Evidence of human love, devotion and sheer joy on all sides. Three stones carefully arranged within a concrete barrier, one of them as close as red sequins can come to a Fabergé Easter egg…

and a veritable Bee Multiplex one allotment on down. Overwinter here, please! You are safe!

And — right next to a stump covered in glorious tiny fungi, needing no human help at all — something else that needs no human help at all.

One dandelion, who has found his own perfect spring residence.

I’m well around the bend by now, almost at the end, almost at the moment when I must rejoin the city in all its grit and grime. But first, for encouragement, this message.

I don’t know the origin of this paint job, or the intended meaning of the slogan. I’m happy to take it as a reminder to enjoy wherever my feet take me.

A necessary reminder, here at 7th & Granville!

Yup, grit and grime.

But also, look, some murals to enjoy, tucked away in the alcove beneath that bridge on-ramp.

There’s more to enjoy, hoofing on up Granville: another mural, and more gardens.

The mural, Force of Nature, is by Phil Grey, part of the 2021 Vancouver Mural Festival. Since the VMF is no more, how fitting that the mural rises over a garden that, one day, will also be no more.

Signage acknowledges — proudly — that this is a temporary garden.

It is one example of such gardens throughout the city. They are organized by Community Garden Builders, a local social enterprise that works with landowners and community groups to create temporary gardens and dog parks on spaces awaiting redevelopment.

Just like all those gardens along the Arbutus Greenway!

The art of the temporary.

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by icelandpenny on 17 April 2026  •  Permalink
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Look Low, Look High

6 April 2026 – And also look straight ahead.

I’m in Rocky Point Park in Port Moody, headed for the Shoreline Trail that curves around the far eastern end of Burrard Inlet. It’s in forest — but right on the edge of the forest, with constant water views. For example, the mud flats I’ve just shown you — all the more dramatic with the one-two punch of low tide and bright sunshine.

All along the way, ribbons of water snake through the mud, every instant their positions that tiny bit different, true to nature’s rhythms.

The pedestrian trail, separate from the biking trail, is gravel, liberally supplied with benches, and sometimes, as here, quite broad.

But sometimes not broad — as here, with a liberal supply of tree roots.

When I’m not watching where I put my feet — an important part of “look low” — I’m giddy-stunned by the interplay of colour and texture. All around me, every level. This stump, for example, itself firm and crisply defined…

but in a context of other colours, other textures.

Reds so red!

Greens so green!

And textures smack up against each other, to punch colour & energy that much higher.

Signs of early spring.

My first Skunk Cabbage of the year…

and, up in those trees, not only nests that show this is indeed a Great Blue Heron Nesting Colony…

but adult heron heads poking out of almost every nest, and this heron (to right of the left-hand nest) perched on a branch.

I don’t know whose duties are what, up there in the nests. Like other trail-walkers, I’m content just to watch for a while, and admire.

Thanks to low tide, it’s an easy walk out to the lumber mill remnants still to be seen in Old Mill Site Park.

I look out-across to the big view, but I also look down-under a decaying concrete ledge, itself now covered in moss and colonizing plants…

to see some of the industrial decay: rotting supports, shards of brick and, but of course, yer basic bit of 21st-c. graffiti.

I’m not quite at Trail’s end, not quite all the way to Old Orchard Park, but this is always the spot I feel marks my personal trail’s end. (And, hey, it’s my walk, right?) So I turn.

One last pause to admire the snake dance of mud & water…

one last pause to admire dappled shadows thrown on trees & trail…

and I’m back in Port Moody.

Where a random walk down Clarke Street leads me first past — and then very much into — Andes Latin Foods. Run by a family from Venezuela, the bodega offers foodstuffs from all the Andean countries, both staples to take away, and foods to eat then and there from the menu.

I settle into place.

The café con leche is trans-Andean, but the alfajor is definitely the Peruvian version.

Bliss!

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by icelandpenny on 6 April 2026  •  Permalink
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Old & New

30 March 2026 – It’s everywhere.

Old East Van building, new blossoms…

Old Granville bridge, new leaves…

Old market barrel, new plantings…

Old Tassel Fern, brand-new baby fronds.

It’s spring!

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by icelandpenny on 30 March 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 30 March 2026

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Sun X 2

15 March 2026 – Needles of rain and 5C as I start this post, but we’ve just had two consecutive days of sunshine. The first unexpected, the second predicted, and both a reason to go walk by the water.

The First, Unexpected

Certain the gloom will persist or worsen, we linger over a long café lunch. Suddenly the sky is bright, so we abandon indoors and set off for Kitsilano Beach. Our route takes us north on Cypress Street — where of course I notice winter moss.

By now, it’s not the only act in town. Plum blossoms are out everywhere you look, including right here.

We could stick with Cypress and get to the water the obvious way, but we don’t.

This alley…

offers one bright garage door, plus a less-obvious way to reach the water, from another angle.

Once there, a pole-top gull — undoubtedly in the pay of the tourist board — welcomes us to English Bay and a long view of all those freighters waiting their turn to carry on down Burrard Inlet to the Port of Vancouver.

Smooth sand in front of us, just waiting for volleyball season, but over there, a bit to the east, a great spill of rocks.

They guard the entrance to False Creek, which in turn leads the eye on across the water to Sunset Beach and the towers of West Vancouver.

Drop eyes instead to our own toes, and the reward is the interplay of seaweed, gritty sand, mussel shells and the angles and colours of each individual rock.

We backtrack throughVanier Park, drawn by the shrouded boats and bright Blue Cabin, all tucked up in Heritage Harbour.

This is the free, outdoors, floating component of the adjacent Vancouver Maritime Museum, offering a curated collection of vintage wooden boats and currently also hosting the Blue Cabin arts residency program.

We prowl each walkway, peer into the tent sheltering a restoration project…

and compensate for mostly shrouded boats by at least reading their historical signage…

and enjoying the dance between red bumper balls and glittering shafts of open water.

The Second, Predicted

Counting on sunshine (though well-bundled in winter clothing), I set out for a planned morning walk. This one will set off from Tsawwassen, in the City of Delta, and our rendezvous is the St. George SkyTrain station in the neighbouring City of Surrey.

The angles and brilliance of the building right next to the station…

are in dramatic contrast to the flowing lines, and the very different brilliance, of our chosen trail.

We’ve just taken the 12th Ave. entrance to the Dyke Trail, in Boundary Bay Regional Park.

This is a great, long curving ribbon of a park, all along the curve of Boundary Bay itself, and we’re here for the curl at the Tsawwassen end of that ribbon, looping south to Centennial Beach and around. We decide to walk out along the dyke, and then return on the Raptor Trail, in behind the dunes.

Plum blossoms here too, this time paired with the rough gold of winter fields rather than the emerald of winter moss on trees.

We’re nowhere near the Raptor Trail, not yet, but we meet one anyway — a juvenile Bald Eagle, peacefully contemplating life down by the water.

He’s not eating anything, he’s not doing anything, and he has no interest in any of us.

We are all extremely interested in him, however! People point, murmur, pass news about him one to another all along the trail. Farther on, a woman comfortably snugged down in a hollow, cradling the great long telephoto lens of a true twitcher, assures us she has already seen him, photographed him, and is now more interested in all those Black Oystercatchers at this end of the trail. (We turn our own attention to Oystercatchers for a while, glad that someone has identified them for us.)

We pivot at Centennial Beach, turning inland slightly, in between sand dunes, to join the Raptor Trail. Right on cue, a Coopers Hawk, silhouetted against the clouds.

Good grief, it is windy. And, good grief, that makes it so much colder! Little giggles of delight when, just for a moment, the wind quits smacking us around. My companion wishes he’d brought his tuque; I am smug with the earflaps down on my winter hat.

But no complaints. It is a glorious day. and the nip in the air puts that much more snap, that much more energy, in our walk.

A pause to admire this elegant Great Blue Heron, so very vertical…

and the Mallard in the adjacent rivulet, so very horizontal.

Another pause, for the exuberance of this tree, throwing its branches at the sky…

and a final pause, a giggle, a poke in each other’s ribs, at the very different mood evoked by these trees…

knocked crooked and proof that there are some very industrious beaver in the area.

Time for lunch. We set off, chattering about all we’ve seen and agreeing that we’ve had huge good luck with the weather.

(Still needles of rain, as I finish this post, and by now only 3C and heading on down the scale.)

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by icelandpenny on 15 March 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 15 March 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/03/15/sun-x-2/

‘Scapes

1 March 2026 — Sub-categories of landscape. Skyscape and streetscape and alleyscape and (why not) trailscape. Plus a final skyscape flourish, courtesy of a friend and moon-focused, to round it off.

A completely arbitrary grouping! Just how I happened to cluster what I’ve noticed, over the past few days.

This brooding late-afternoon sky, (precisely 5:24:43 PST, said my camera), with reflected last slivers of sunlight in a few windows and early neon glowing on the streets.

The next morning, walking to Gallery Jones on East 1st Ave, I’m hit first by a smellscape of warm cinnamon bun…

and then, peering through the open door, see the cause of the aroma: stacks of newly-baked buns in this wholesale bakery, with a worker wiping his cheek as he advances on yet another tray.

From streetscape to alleyscape, somewhere to explore until the gallery opens its doors. Never mind, who needs curated art on walls when the alley offers a Blue Period worthy of Picasso?

All the textures, all the varieties of blue in that wall of corrugated metal. Whether long shot, as above, or up close to the window (which in turn frames reflected skyscape).

The same blue on the adjacent wall, providing a sleek, smooth No Parking backdrop…

for bicycle parts that are definitely & definitively parked.

Another cultural excursion the following day — this one for Maximilien Brisson’s glorious creation, Scorrete lagrime mie, at St. Anselm’s Church on the UBC grounds.

The church sits right next to various trails into Pacific Spirit Regional Park and, post-concert, I am pulled onto the Salish Trail…

by this sentinel tree, this doorman tree, imposing in his winter greatcoat of emerald velvet.

The trailscape unfolds around me.

Next up, an arched branch…

proving that left-over tassels of autumn red are just as striking as winter moss green.

To my left, farther away, another arched branch…

proving that (nyah nyah) you can have just as much impact, stark naked.

Round another bend in the trail, where first a ragged spire of ancient tree trunk…

and then a fresh-cut end of tree trunk…

prove that, in the bravura sweepstakes, red cedar always wins.

Back home, delighted with memories of both the concert and the trail, I open a text from a friend for yet another delight. It’s a skyscape photo to round off my collection…

her (7:55:07 PST) moon tribute to, as she points out, “the 12th day of the lunar new year.”

Thank you, ST.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 1 March 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 1 March 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/03/01/scapes/

On The Bounce

24 February 2026 – Rays of sunshine flashing all over the place, and colours bouncing around with them.

Well, no, not literally. But it looks, it feels, like that.

I stand at the intersection of E. Broadway & Main, deliberately missing two green lights, transfixed by the transformation of the Yarn Bomber’s “Be Kind” slogan and companion heart.

After years of exposure, the colours have faded and the wool is bedraggled. Construction screening now hides all that, and today’s sunshine throws us the words and image in dramatic, high-contrast relief.

Moments later I turn into the alley that will lead me to the Salvation Army drop-off centre, my eye primed for the bounce of light, colour and shadow.

Barely into the alley, and a perfectly ordinary wooden staircase delivers all that.

A few more steps, and look: green/yellow wooden pole, blue/pink/black garbage bins beyond, and down there in the distance, the turquoise blunt end of a Sally Ann truck. (I just have to stand in this ramshackle alley and look around. Colour smacks me in the eye.)

Even this tattered fabric car-shelter is on the bounce. Metallic silver, varying shades of blue in the window panel, and a vivid yellow RESERVED on the pavement for extra impact.

How fitting that right at the Scotia St. end of the alley, just where I turn into the Sally Ann compound, I find the splashiest colour bounce of all: this 2020 VMF mural, Vancouver: a People-Powered Future. (I later learn the artist, Oakland Galbraith, is only 12 years old at the time, which makes it even more wonderful.)

Next day, more sunshine, more bounce — starting with my own slight geographic bounce, down to the Devonian Harbour Park on Burrard Inlet at the edge of Stanley Park.

I happen to think the park’s signature sculpture installation is OK-fine, but not outstanding. Today, in all this blazing sunshine, it is outstanding. Today, there is nothing solo about Solo (Natalie McHaffie, 1986); it offers a whole conversation among its elements.

Neon-bright turquoise cedar panels play against stainless steel framework that seems to ripple in the light…

and, together, they throw sharp black outlines against the green grass.

Later, at the eastern end of my walk, I eye the bright edge to each peak on the Canada Place fabric roof…

and realize the sun can throw sharp white outlines just as easily as black.

Clever old sun.

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by icelandpenny on 24 February 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 24 February 2026

https://icelandpenny.com/2026/02/24/on-the-bounce-2/

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