26 November 2024 – I’ll get to “Great Northern.” Let’s start with “bimble.”

I learned this splendid word just three days ago, reading Snow! — James Elkington’s latest post to his blog Mountains, Myths and Moorlands. The post began, “We woke to a lot of snow, I managed to get onto the moors for a bimble.” Subsequent e-chat with this Yorkshireman taught me that the word is both noun and verb, and means “to walk about without purpose.”

(I am not going to rename my blog “Bimble Broad”! Though the idea does have me giggling…)

Yes well, on to Great Northern Way.

I decide to have myself a bimble the length of GNW, so-named in tribute to its earlier life as a stretch of the Great Northern Railway route from Seattle to Vancouver.

Easy access for me, from my home just a bit uphill: down Main, turn right-east on East 6th instead of left-west, then left on Brunswick… and there it is, the Great Northern Way, just a few blocks farther down.

Down by the construction crane, which will be there for a good while yet.

There’s all the activity for the Broadway Subway Project — the westward extension of the Millennium Line — and then there’s the whole South Flats neighbourhood thing as well. I already know about the former (and live with it, in my own neighbourhood); I become aware of the latter in the course of this bimble.

Down/down, north/north, past a curious cat on a gate post at East 2nd…

and here I am, at GNW itself. Already so transformed from its railway/industrial/service area, let alone from its earlier, natural life as the final stretch of False Creek before the needs of expanding commerce decided to fill it in.

To the right of the construction crane, the white, blocky complex of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, whose arrival triggered this latest academic/creative/high-tech/digital era. Far right, the Centre for Digital Media (UBC, Simon Fraser U, Emily Carr, BC Institute of Technology). Far left, the corrugated metal and bright red of Canvas, one of the area’s new-builds catering to the Emily Carr vibe by offering its condo owners such amenities as flexible artist gallery space and collective workshop space, along with the more usual fitness centre and children’s playground.

And, in between, the work-in-progress GNW Emily Carr transit station, with its hoardings and bouncy signage to explain what’s happening, along with viewing slots so you can see for yourself.

I read signage, I peer downward through a viewing slot.

I read more signage.

I learn how to move three elephants, should the need occur…

and, around the corner, I learn why to pat every dog I see.

Still hoardings, still signage, but now with a whole other focus.

South Flats.

With an “s.” Please notice that. Not “z.”

Until recently, this trending area, to prove how very artistic/creative/trending it was, branded itself Flatz. Not like the grimy, grubby old industrial False Creek Flats spelled with a humble “s.”

Nosiree. With a “z”!

And now the anonymous They have decided that “z” is passé.

This whole area, the whole length of Great Northern, is now branded Flats-with-an-s. (I remember a New Zealand academic, at a Learned Society conference I once covered for the CBC, observing that every reputation goes through three stages: “Bunk, Debunk, Rebunk.” Z has been debunked; S has been rebunked.)

My bimble is showing me that South Flats is A Thing. A Very Big Thing. Forgive me this moment of flackery, but I have to offer you the development’s website, its explanation of this emerging “tech and arts hub.” Rapid transit is just part of what’s going on, in behind those hoardings.

A lot of that is still to come. While waiting, you can play South Flats bingo…

or just visit Nemesis Coffee, whose striking petal shape is also (see above) the central icon in the bingo game.

Far side of Nemesis, the eastern entrance to Emily Carr…

and facing it, the Centre for Digital Media. Except I’ve stopped gawking at all that high-design high-tech.

I am now gawking at winter moss.

The season has begun. I remember, my first winter here, becoming totally enraptured by the vibrant green of winter moss. I am still enraptured.

On east along Great Northern Way, lots of chain link fence, with Things Happening in behind.

Nature likes chain link fence, vines especially, they climb all over it. Even when the fence is mostly draped in bright blue tarpaulin. Vine still finds a way.

I am fascinated to see that somebody has deliberately, carefully, spray-painted some of those leaves blue, to match.

I am now, almost, at the end of GNW. The thoroughfare itself won’t end, it will just — yet again — change name. (West 4th to West 6th to West 2nd to East 2nd to GNW to East 6th.) Never mind! Here opposite China Creek North Park, it is still Great Northern Way. As I look back, I can read the purpose behind its broad, straight lines, and see again the railway track it was designed to carry.

And then, just like that, I find I have left Great Northern Way. I have passed Glen Drive, I am almost at Clark Drive, and I am now on East 6th Avenue.

I am also passing one of the City’s icons: the East Van Cross.

Currently behind chain link and tarps, because that’s the here-and-now of things, the artwork has its own decade-plus of history, and speaks to a much longer history than that.

Asked by the City to commemorate Vancouver’s role as host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, artist Ken Lum created this sculpture. It is not a symbol of Christian piety. He drew his inspiration from a graffito image of the day, frequently seen in East Vancouver alleys, the intersection of “East” with “Van” in a spare, elegant shape dictated, Scrabble-like, by the interplay of letters. “Over the years, the symbol had been adopted as an emblem for East Vancouver as a whole,” said Lum, “but its appearance has generally been tentative rather than overt.” Lum brought it out of the alleys, made it overt.

As I turn north onto Clark, my bimble ends. I am now walking with purpose. I shall briskly take myself on down to East Hastings, and start the bus trip home.

The Coast Range Mountains are before me. The light is failing, the sky is snowy, and the mountain peaks — look at those Grouse Mountain ski runs — are white with snow.

Snow! It’s perfect. James Elkington’s post about snow taught me to bimble, and my bimble ends with snow.