18 August 2026 – Every now and then, I challenge myself to live up to the Marcel Proust quote on my home page: “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” What a concept! It is within our own power, to make the “old” endlessly new.
I decide to walk myself north along a very familiar stretch of Main Street — with new eyes. I start at 30th Avenue.
I am almost immediately rewarded with Kissing Crows.
I love everything about this sign: hand-lettered, informative, friendly, giving good reasons please to honour the request.
The cycle shop’s storefront, right next door, is very classy, very handsome…
but I still love the laneway notice best.
Slight deviation at East 28th. A few steps eastward, to enjoy the north/south contrast either side of the avenue.
On the north: a grotty old, environmentally-worthy old, recycling depot. Thank you, Joe.
On the south: the cool elegance of Mercurial Boutique Clothing, with its “curated” (I quote) collections.
I check a few price tags, out here on the sidewalk, and quietly slink away.
Back to Main Street!
All the happy combinations on offer, up and down Main: not just of what to buy/eat/do, but of choices within each category, often in the same location.
Here, for example, you can drink draft beer or, if you’d rather, Vietnamese coffee. (Or a fresh avocado smoothie.)
Happy customers inside, choosing their favourites; happy woman outside, scrolling her phone as she walks.
There is ramen…
there are records…
and there’s the reminder of a late-summer sale.
There are animals — to inform us, to amuse us, to loosen our purse strings.
The tattoo parlour skunk…
the fitness studio ants…
the welcoming Maneki Neko cats…
and the welcoming dachshund.
People linger, this pleasant summer afternoon.
They linger over everything from sidewalk books…
to a sidewalk coffee (which he is enjoying with his own hardcover book, thank you very much).
I almost linger myself right through this doorway…
because the Regional Assembly of Text is one of my favourite places in the whole city. Run by two Emily Carr University grads, it offers a whole world of everything relating to print and text, some vintage, some current, much of it locally made.
But I don’t fall through the door.
Instead, I find myself nipping eastward ’round the next corner. My new eyes are having a good time, but my old ears suddenly don’t want all the noise of an urban main artery.
Once off Main Street — just like that — my new eyes and my old ears are both equally happy.
9 August 2026 – Not “on the lam” as in, fleeing; “on the lam” as in, literally, on David Lam Park.
Even more literally, smack at the park’s north-east corner, at the Pacific & Drake intersection.
I’ve just come from a noon-hour flamenco performance in the Scotiabank Dance Centre (north of Emery Barnes Park, top of the map), and wandered my way south on ‘Drake, en route False Creek and a Seawall walk at least part-way home.
I do not carry straight on, into the park. I stop for this.
Wouldn’t you?
Politely waiting my turn behind E-Scooter Lady gives me time to decide what to buy. I am limited, not by inclination but by space in my mini-backpack. I weigh options. I am judicious.
Mini-backpack now bulging with corn and cherries, I step into the park.
My eye skitters right past the green field; I’m already mentally down there at the silver ribbon, down there at False Creek. I vaguely register something-or-other going on mid-field… but who cares?
Silly me. The something-or-other deserves attention.
By the time I’m halfway down the path, my ear is beguiled by children’s laughter and, immediately after, my eye beguiled by a child-version “soccer” ball that comes bouncing to my feet. I give it a boot back towards the father who has come running to retrieve it. He’s all “Sorry!” and I’m all “No, it’s terrific!” and then I stand to watch for a bit.
Two men, one little boy, one little girl, and a whole lot of fun.
I later send the photo to my longtime soccer-coaching nephew, who replies: “Such a great age as they discover the joy of kicking and chasing the ball around!” What’s really great is that those adults are wise enough to let it be pure joy — yes, they give some tips, as the children race around, but it’s all warm voices, encouragement and cheers.
I’m barely again underway when I again stop. For this.
The ceramic mosaic, I later learn, is a 2002 community project facilitated by Leah Dexter and titled Watch Your Step. I obey. I watch and I also read. (I always read.) The encircling text is surprising, since it juxtaposes negative values (e.g. “panic,” “darkness,” “fear”) with positive (e.g “unity,” “awaken”).
One short sentence at the very top explains the mixture.
“This image represents the balance between struggle and growth we all share.”
The both/and of life. I am nodding agreement as I walk on.
The Seawall pathways display their own mix of both/and’s:
directions for pedestrians and cyclists, on that pole at the upper left, and dog-owner instructions, here at the lower right.
One last Lam-image, in the water and visible just above the sign, as I leave the park.
Can you see it? The metal arc spanning “David” to “Lam,” with a narrow cylinder shooting skyward on the right. It is another of the park’s art installations, this one called Brush With Illumination, by Buster Simpson (1998).
I walk on east, thinking how richly I have been rewarded by my brief time in this 4.34 Ha park:fresh local fruit &veggies, children playing their way into soccer skills, and art installations.
Much as I approve of public art, much as I appreciate the Okanagan bounty (cherries beside me as I write these words)… it is the kiddies’ squeals of laughter that please me most.
26 July 2026 – It is no longer hot and not yet raining. I am out the door.
Out the door with only the vaguest of plans, but at least the intention to capitalize on this moment of walkable weather. False Creek north shore why not, but farther on down the creek than my casual Cambie Loop and a return by ferry. Also why not.
Lots of flexibility in the plan, which I promptly celebrate with an extra loop into/around City Centre Artist Lodge — long a city motel, slated for razing & redevelopment, meanwhile the entire complex is covered in murals and its 79 units are reborn as low-rent artist studios.
Rivers of colour, on the walls and on the ground.
When I get to real water, it is silver-grey.
I’m now at False Creek, the eastern end that proves it is a false creek not a real creek at all, just a whopping long inlet, and here’s the end of it. To my east Science World; at my back Creekside Park; immediately west of that, an exercise in PR:
The map excludes Creekside Park since this development corporation didn’t create it, but it does feature their own “Community Pop-Up Park” right next door. I grr-grr slightly about the use of “pop-up” to describe a park that will continue to be here for some years yet — even as I recognize it’s an exercise in managing expectations. Don’t get too comfy, folks! it tells us; we will eventually be building on this land.
But not yet. So, meanwhile, I eye the map and let it inspire me. I’ll at least walk past Cambie Bridge and Coopers’ Park, at least to David Lam Park. Maybe farther?
I don’t know it yet, but the answer is yes. Farther.
I’ll carry on past George Wainborn Park, under those two distant bridges (Granville and Burrard, respectively), past this map’s named territory, all the way to Sunset Beach before doubling back to a ferry dock at the Aquatic Centre.
Probably under the joint influence of map plus planned ferry-ride home, I begin noting where I am in terms of those two sets of landmarks.
Parq Casino, for example, with its splendid reflections…
is located just behind the Plaza of Nations ferry dock, east of Coopers’ Park.
A bit farther west, mid-park, I eye this dragon boat in some amazement. It’s just sitting there! I’m used to seeing them furiously in motion.
I want motion? I get it.
Coopers’ Park (on the footprint of Sweeney Cooperage and Saw Mill, which operated here until 1981) includes a playground, right under Cambie Bridge. The playground is closed these days, for upgrade work on the bridge — but that doesn’t mean nobody is playing.
Skateboard city on the detour path! With two young skateboarders taking turns, and one photographer filming their jumps.
Watching Seawall action, yet another crow, on yet another lamp post.
I happen to see him as I approach the Yaletown dock, midway between Coopers’ and David Lam parks, but he could be anywhere.
Each time I’m at the Yaletown dock, I read another of the incised historical vignettes. This one reminds us of the Great Fire of 1886, when a fire set to clear brush instead razed the entire community.
(Reader alert: I later look up further references, including the link above, and discover discrepancies in the data, even in the June date itself. )
More small discoveries as I go, including this mini-causeway as I round the curve that will give me my first view of the eastern end of David Lam Park. (It’s been here all along; I’ve just never noticed it.)
The David Lam shoreline contains two of my favourite False Creek sculptures — more precisely, the twin elements that comprise one art installation:Marking High Tide and Waiting for Low Tide, by retired landscaped architect turned sculptor Donald Vaughan.
I pause to read, as always, the words written around the High Tide concrete ring, set on tall pillars. “As the moon circles the earth the oceans respond with the rhythm of the tide.”
This time I also note, crossly, how grubby it now looks. I’m all for new installations, all for upgrades — but could we please also maintain what we already have? Even if you just give them a scrub, every now and then?
On west I go, on and on west, past George Wainborn Park and under the Granville Bridge…
with its slam-damn view of all the activity across the water on Granville Island, in the water itself, and among the marinas and complexes here on the north side.
Things are markedly tonier than they were farther east, and private property suddenly disrupts the public Seawall. Arrows direct us around these towers; signs politely tell us that if we instead insist on walking through the grounds, we are to keep moving.
I walk through. I stop moving long enough to contemplate the sidewalk promo for Ancora, which on one side advertises its sake/oyster offerings, and on the other…
invites diners to bring their dogs.
I decide not to spend time sulking about the fact that dogs are more welcome, in this enclave, than I am.
My non-sulk policy is promptly rewarded. Back on public-access Seawall territory, at the foot of Hornby Street, I see a cheerful, handwritten invitation to walk half a block up Hornby and visit the inBtwn Café. I am charmed. I walk the half-block.
It is indeed a tiny café, clearly a local hangout, with a DIY artistic vibe. Ancora offers sake and oysters; inBtwn offers watercolour paint-pots and brushes. People use them.
I settle for a latte, not artistic expression, but I do ask co-owner Christy Evans about the backstory. She had hospitality experience, and COVID pushed her to act on what she meant by “hospitality”: bake treats to go with the coffee, create a community hub for socializing, give people resources for creative expression while they are socializing and eating treats and drinking coffee. Eventually husband and co-owner Wade Edwards quit his construction business and joined her full-time — as an artist (whose works always include a tiny red Christy-figure) and, it turned out, as master scone-maker as well.
After that break I carry on, energized by more than the caffeine.
Past the Hornby dock, past Burrard Bridge, I’m right up to the Aquatic Centre dock at the eastern edge of Sunset Beach. I could just drop down for a ferry — but, no-no, I can’t do that. I have to walk on. Down there, halfway down Sunset Beach, I can see my absolute-favourite False Creek artwork.
That dark, U-shaped curve on the sand toward the right? That’s it.
I keep walking. I want to visit it close up, and then I’ll double back to the Aquatic Centre dock. (Since it’s the last dock on this north shore of False Creek, I have no choice. Not if I want to stick to my home-by-ferry idea. And I do.)
Pretty wild flowers along the way, also tangles of bushes to which I’m not paying much attention until a woman striding past me points at them and calls out, “Blackberries!” I look, and yes they are. Not yet black, but working on it.
Then, finally I’m up to the sculpture. I can never remember the title, but when I read it again, it makes literal, mathematical sense.
This is 217.5 Arc X 13 — 13 arcs of metal, each curved to 217.5°. It is the work of French artist Bernar Venet, one of his Arc series designed to celebrate “the beauty, balance and malleability of raw steel,” and a legacy installation from the 2009-2011 Vancouver Biennale. (Later, I learn the 2025-2027 Biennale has brought us 241.5 Arc X 2 by the same artist, which is already installed at 884 East Georgia Street in Strathcona. Yes, I will go visit it.)
It’s ferry-time. To get all the way back east to the Village dock, I have to transfer to another boat on Granville Island — which I do.
I chat with the couple next to me, who, it turns out, used to live right opposite where I now live. We agree it’s a terrific neighbourhood. We also agree that it’s an uphill climb from the dock. We grimace, they in memory and I in anticipation. (I do not confess that, just sometimes, I wimp out and take the bus.)
No wimping today. Uphill I walk heading south, and then more uphill as I swing to the east. I pause a moment crossing Quebec Street. Not to catch my breath! How could you suggest such a thing!
I am merely paying my respects to les belles dames. the guardian angels, of Quebec Manor.
16 June 2026 – And so, at 6:15 a.m. as promised, I’m off VIA Rail in Ste-Foy, then onto the shuttle bus, and…
across the St. Lawrence River into Quebec City.
I decide a walk will do more for my addled head than extra coffee. Out I go, up to the surviving section (4.6 km) of stone ramparts that, as of 1608, were being built to encircle and protect Nouvelle France.
The Kent Gate is still imposing, still a witness of Then, living with us in the Now.
I walk on along to Porte Saint-Jean, look back at the juxtaposition of Then and Now:
young bums on ancient stones, intercut by ancient canon, their owners busy on 21st-c smart phones.
I begin to wonder a bit about the inherent balancing act for old cities. How do you honour and protect that heritage, without freezing into a museum that denies modern life?
I can’t answer the question, but I do see more examples of this city’s balancing act all around me. A new building sliced in between old ones, for example, here in Place D’Youville, just outside the ramparts…
and, also in Place D’Youville, young-culture skateboarders twirling past one of the city’s abundance of old-culture statuary (here, Les Muses).
All this history, all this European ambience. Quebec City is a magnet for tourists.
Another balancing act.
On near-by Rue Ste-Anne (where tourist me happens to be staying), I look into an alcove and see some local push-back:
Indeed. How does a tourist-magnet city welcome and please tourists, without being overrun and turned into a cartoon? I head downhill on Rue Saint-Jean — a tourist thoroughfare — and see something of the current mix. It’s eclectic and strongly patriotic, both Québécois and pan-Canadian.
High on the wall, half-way up the block beyond the Rue Sainte-Angèle sign in the foreground, you’ll see the Cows logo…
a PEI brand, offering terrific ice-cream along with a range of whimsical cow-image clothing & accessories.
Right across the street…
less nutritious, and surely just as popular, the lure of Mary’s Popcorn.
Cheerful kitsch here at my elbow, with its own patriotic statements…
from the red “not-for-sale” Canadian cap, to the mock Quebec licence plate, with its chosen example of distinctive Quebec swear words.
(Flashback: when I joined the fledgling Oxfam-Québec as Director of Projects, the rest of the team, all francophone, promptly taught me how to swear “comme une bonne Québécoise.” And I still can.)
Yet more patriotism, a classy clothing shop with its proud boast in large letters on the window.
Yay for that, but it’s a bit confusing, no? A Canadian enterprise that chooses to name itself San Francisco?
At the next intersection, an old building whose lettering and style live up to the elegance of the building itself…
plus, across Saint-Jean in a second-storey balcony window…
a curious moose, keeping track of us all.
Enough musing. I’m hungry.
I park myself at a Bistro Hortus patio table and listen to the young, stylish (and stylishly tattoo’ed) servers switch smoothly from French to English as the occasion requires.
My choice is the “Salade biologique au chèvre des neiges” (goat cheese). I speak French with the server, and she offers me the same polished charm she offers everyone else. She does break composure, however, wrinkling her brow slightly when I ask her to bring back the menu for a moment — until I explain I want to take a picture of the salad description “comme une bonne p’tite touriste.” This causes her to burst into genuine laughter, and after that we have an amused good time together.
Fortified with salad plus café au lait, I walk on and discover Artisans Canada. Since I’m already wearing a Tilley hat with a little wooden chickadee pin on it and a MEC backpack and my Newfoundland earrings (thank you again, DJ), I fit right in. I make a few purchases, and I now suggest that — should quality Canadiana interest you — you might have a look for yourself.
Looping ’round to head back uphill to my vielle-ville hotel, I cut through the very modern plaza skirting the slightly old City Hall (1890s), which sits on the site of the very old Jesuit college (1730s). Trees, shrubbery, spring blossoms, and seating from which to admire it all.
Plus fountains of water that shoot into the air at regular intervals…
and have these two little girls in fits of laughter.
Judging by speech patterns and body language, these are local people relaxing in a local park, even as tourist season rumbles into high gear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
"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"
