13 July 2024 – Oh, there’s Standard Time & Daylight Saving Time, and there’s Pacific Time & Mountain Time & Central Time & Eastern Time & Atlantic Time (& Newfoundland Time). Plus the zones and adjustments that grid the rest of the world. All of them coded to numbers.
Clock Time.
Then there’s Crow Time.
No numbers, just quality of light. The shifting intensity of light that signals, each dawn, the right moment to leave the roost and, each dusk, the right moment to return. That timing also measures the changing length of day.
Vancouver crows (corvus caurinus) are ours by day only. Each night they roost in neighbouring Burnaby, and my building is beside a major flight path between the two locations. While (I must confess) I’ve never witnessed the morning influx, I have often watched the evening exodus spell-bound.
Sometimes a flurry passes close to my balcony…
but, more typically, air currents stream the birds a bit farther north, speckles against a more distant sky.
In between waves, it is an empty sky.
But only until the inevitable straggler comes into view.
Flapping his wings like crazy as he tries to catch up.
In Crow Time, Vancouver dusk these days occurs about 9:30 p.m. Mid-winter, it’s more like 4:30. Allow for the seasonal time-shift — that’s still a four-hour difference.
Sigh! I can hear you muttering, “Fine, but… total length of day? Because that’s only the dusk half of the equation.” True, and since I’ve never personally witnessed Vancouver dawn, Crow Time, I have to trust boring old Clock Time calculations found on the internet.
At summer solstice, some 16 hrs:15 min. of daylight; at winter solstice, just 8 hrs:11 min.
Come mid-winter, those crows get to do some serious sleeping in!
4 July 2024 – I am again approaching False Creek. Again. Yet again. For the umpty-third time.
Even so, I expect not to be bored. I am reassured by the wisdom of Heraclitus and, some 700 or so years later, Proust, who observed (respectively, in translation): “No man ever steps in the same river twice” and “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new lands but in having new eyes.”
My eyes, and my feet and everything in between, we all step off West 1st Avenue near Columbia Street to head north into Hinge Park. It is a wetland park adjacent to False Creek, named for the sharp kink, the “hinge,” in the traffic grid right about here.
The park features a run of train track and buffer stops close to its West-1st edge, which is both a tribute to the area’s railway heritage and a handsome installation in its own right.
(If you like rust and industrial artefacts.)
Still morning, but already very warm. It is summer! I am hinged & heated indeed. The bullrushes and other greenery have erupted all along the tiny rivulet that runs through Hinge Park, almost completely obscuring the thread of water below.
It’s only when I reach the little mid-point bridge that I can look back and see the channel.
I also see the distant figures (left side of the walkway) whose animated conversation briefly filled my ears as I walked by.
A lanky pedestrian, a keen birder, is chatting with two Park staffers, who pause in their clean-up duties long enough to talk wildlife with him. “Yes,” says the vivacious young female staffer, “yesterday I see the heron, also this morning, and yesterday I see the dogs but not today.” “The dogs?” repeats the birder, puzzled. “In the water?” The woman laughs, waves her hands. “No, no! I must be so careful to pronounce! I mean ducks.” She repeats it, heavy on the final consonants. “DucKKSS.” Turns out she is from Mexico, and still getting her mouth around the physical shape of English words.
A quick look forward, from this handy little bridge, tracing the channel on north into False Creek…
and soon after here I am, on the SeaWall at False Creek.
Hinge Park is behind me, Habitat Island is before me and a horde of excited kiddies are in the causeway between the two, being sorted into teams for whatever adventure is next on the schedule.
I right-turn myself eastward, surprised by the lowest tide I’ve ever seen between the park and this island.
Traffic in the Creek to entertain me, as I walk along: a trim False Creek Ferry heading west with canoeists and a paddle-boarder in the background for company…
and then a bright red Japadog food truck to lure me onward to Olympic Village Square.
I resist, but I am tempted. I thoroughly enjoy this Vancouver A to the Q: “What happens when Japanese sensibilities meet North American fast food?”
A chattering group of friends relax in the sunshine in the Square — and, look, they are obeying the sign. They are not climbing on the artwork! (The Birds, 2010, Myfanwy MacLeod.)
A necessary sign, I have to add: attempting to scale the birds had become A Thing To Do, and as a result both installations needed extensive restoration.
One last False Creek image, a bright Aquabus ferry loading passengers at the Olympic Village dock…
and I finally turn away from the water, to zigzag back home.
28 July 2024 – I’ve always loved working boats, starting with the sturdy little Dorval Island ferry of my young childhood. The MV Aurora Explorer is a recent addition to the list, for all the reasons given in my previous post, At Work & Play.
But, I must confess, she is not my very most favourite of all.
That honour goes to another boat working the Discovery Islands area — more specifically, to one tied up by the Bear Bay logging camp in Bute Inlet.
This boat.
I hung over our own meticulously cared-for railing, and fell in love with every rusty, battered, grubby, dented, faded — and still functioning! — square millimetre of her.
And I had no idea what I was looking at. I asked my boating friends for help.
She is a boom boat — used to sort logs and push them around. “Super fun to drive,” fondly recalls Commodore C., as relayed by Commodress (sic) F., “and super effective and efficient. They go sideways, forwards, backwards. There are even boom-boat rodeos!”
This relic is still in service because she still serves, not because the company couldn’t replace her. The most basic internet search turns up sleek new models, boasting for e.g. a “fully enclosed wheelhouse” and promising “special focus on safe navigation and low noise levels.”
26 June 2024 – My previous post ended with a tease: having visited the Port Moody Art Shuffle, I announced I was preparing a “shuffle” of my own.
Not soft-shoe! (Though thank you, Jo, for the quip.) Nope, my shuffle is all about water, even though it begins in the air.
A 40-minute Beechcraft flip…
positions me in Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, for a five-day exploration of the Discovery Islands Archipelago…
aboard a steel landing craft…
that had worked two decades in the Arctic, before being rescued from dryland storage in Fort McMurray and sent on her own 90-day delivery trip up a chain of rivers into the Beaufort Sea, through the Bering Strait, around Alaska, and down the Inside Passage to Campbell River…
where she was enlarged and rebuilt for her new life as the cargo/passenger vessel she is today: 135′ long, 34′ wide, capable of carrying 200 tons of cargo plus 12 passengers in six compact but well-equipped staterooms.
This June 18-23, I was one of them.
Boating friends had told me about the MV Aurora Explorer, flagship of Marine Link Transportation (whose fleet also includes tugs and barges), and I jumped at the idea.
It brought back memories of travelling around Newfoundland’s remote communities aboard a passenger/supply vessel in the 1970s, and it reminded me how much I enjoy discovering the nitty-gritty behind the pretty-pretty — the hidden hard work that makes happy outcomes possible.
We passengers assemble at the terminal north of Campbell River, and see our projected route marked on a map on the wall.
We will weave among various of the islands that cluster between Campbell River and the mainland to the east, and also travel to the head of two long mainland inlets, Toba and Bute. We will learn first-hand the truth behind the claim on MLT‘s “working” website (distinct from its tours website). This company provides “full marine freight delivery service,” handling everything from “logging equipment and camp barge site relocations to small pallets of champagne flutes,” offering charter and helicopter options as well, in order to service “remote coastal needs.”
We will also learn the endless calculations and adjustments needed to handle — among other things — tides, currents, cargo rebalancing after each delivery, and the varying states of the access points on shore.
The Aurora sets out fully loaded…
carrying vehicles, tires, fuel and other supplies to deliver to (among others) logging camps, a road-building project, a luxury wilderness resort and an equally luxurious private get-away.
She also carries her own fuel tanker, forklifts and other equipment…
to ensure delivery can and will be made.
We passengers sleep comfortably, eat very well, and hang out up top, sometimes in deckchairs but just as often lined up at the railing, stunned by the scenery around us and by the careful choreography of each delivery.
We immediately appreciate the skills of the chef and the steward; we quickly learn to appreciate the rest of the crew — captain, mate, engineer, deckhand — and, especially, appreciate what all six of them embody. Most of them have BC coastal life in their DNA, along with experience working in remote locations (Alberta’s Oil Sands, for e.g., and an Arctic mining camp), and all have the ability to multi-task.
The captain is usually in the wheelhouse…
but we also see him run a forklift, when that’s what’s needed. Typically, though, it’s the mate, engineer and deckhand who jockey the deliveries. Each site has its requirements.
At one site, the engineer guides the mate as he prepares to off-load a vehicle…
at another, all three work to patch an unstable access road with boulders, so it can bear the weight of the van and trailer they need to bring on-board for delivery to a companion site…
and somewhere else, they deliver fuel from the on-board tanker to on-shore tanks, with one person positioning the nozzle, another controlling hose performance and the third about to wield the dipstick.
Even at a luxury wilderness resort, where everything is perfection — including the access road — there is risk. A combination of factors means there are only 20 minutes between the first safe moment to arrive and the last safe moment to depart. Exceed that window, and you wait for the next tide. The resort knows that if they want that vehicle to be loaded on board, it has to be right there, ready and waiting.
It is right there…
and it is securely in place on deck within the magic 20 minutes. Off we go.
But the Aurora is not only about work, here on the remote BC coast!
There is play time as well.
Always available: the endless beauty that surrounds us. Big vistas as we travel, here for e.g. high up Toba Inlet…
and more beauty when we tie up each night alongside some boom logs. We spend a night in Toba Inlet, where the setting sun throws dramatic mountain shadows onto the mountains opposite.
We have time ashore. One day ATVs carry us up the steep rough track to the top of Hall Point, Sonora Island, where the view pretty well ticks the checklist:
ripening salmonberries in the bushes; a tug and neat rectangular log boom in the water; and mountains beyond, rolling away to infinity. All that’s missing — and thank goodness — is a bear or two. We are happy to make do with bear scat along the track.
Then there are the days when the Aurora lowers her ramp…
not to deliver a bear-watching van or sets of huge tires or tanker-loads of fuel or even furniture for a rich man’s private residence. But, instead, to deliver… us.
Pebbles (above) at Amor Beach, Bute Inlet; sand and rocks at Brem Bay Beach, Toba Inlet…
and crunchy barnacles underfoot at Orchard Bay on Quadra Island…
with huge ribbons of kelp and tiny scurrying baby crabs to complete the scene.
The Aurora lingers at several dramatic waterfalls to allow us a good view. Here at her namesake, the Aurora Falls in Bute Inlet, we are first allowed on the cargo deck to feel the spray in our faces…
and then we are shooed back upstairs. The captain, you see, has a plan. He angles the landing ramp slightly in under the falls, so that Aurora (Falls) power-washes Aurora (Explorer).
Water soon cascades down that ramp to flood the entire deck and scour it clean.
We have the pleasure of life all around us: a pod of Orca whales south of Read Island (too low in the water for any successful photography from our respectful distance); eagles in the air and in the trees; more than a dozen curious seals supervising that 20-minute loading feat at the resort; and the disappearing bum of a bear, who obediently scampers when the captain sounds some warning blasts, to make the landing site safe for the crew.
Human life as well, aboard fishing boats and, my favourite…
in tugs hauling booms of logs, as they have done for so very long.
I even hang over the railing just before we leave our tie-up early one morning, fascinated by the neat angles of the logs, and the punch of that single yellow buoy.
What else? Oh yes, the message in the sand. What is a walk on a sandy beach if nobody writes a message in the sand?
While we walk along Brem Bay Beach, and the mate runs into the water for a swim, our deckhand proves that she pours as much cheerful energy into play as into her work with a forklift, dipstick or boulders to repair roads.
I name her and show her with her permission. So: may I introduce you to Paige Boroski? I can’t think of a better final image for this voyage than her message in the sand: the words “Aurora Explorer” plus a drawing of a boat plus the date.
Unfortunately, not even I can read it, photographed from this angle! And the tide has long since washed it away.
But who cares? This image, like the whole trip, is in my heart.
16 June 2024 – Immersed. Immersed in “immersive exhibitions.” Cascades of sound, visuals and high-tech wizardry. The global phenomenon of Imagine Van Gogh, for example.
Tchaa! Nature got there long before high tech.
For proof, just stand near the corner of East 8th and Brunswick, one sunny mid-June afternoon, and look up.
“All greens,” I whisper to myself, as Miles Davis’ 1959 jazz great, All Blues, begins to run in my mind. I fall into those enveloping greens for a while, with cascades of sound in my head — a mixture of jazz riffs and leaf-rustle — and cascades of motion before my eyes, thanks to the breeze.
But there’s nuthin’ wrong with a little high-tech, come to that.
The next day I hop a SkyTrain out to Port Moody (POMO to its friends) for the 2024 Art Shuffle. Where, at the corner of Moody and Spring streets, I jump into “an immersive electronic art walkthrough,” courtesy of Dusk2Dawn Productions studio.
Immersive and interactive as well: sweep your arms before all those pink flower petals, and they swirl to your choreography. The gestures needn’t be large. Even a simple finger-flick evokes a rivulet of motion on-screen. Charmed, I stand there and dance with the petals.
I can do this in the absence of crowds or commotion, because I am early. Pre-Shuffle, as t’were. They are still setting up, and I have the venue to myself.
It is the perfect omen. As I write this post, I am still in set-up for a Shuffle of my own.
6 June 2024 – After a very long stretch of drizzle days, we have sunshine. Given the state of both wildfire season and our water table, I react to the sunshine with mixed emotions. To draw on one of Susan Sperling’s “lost words” that deserve to live again, I am feeling “merry-go-sorry.”
(And isn’t that more fun than mere “mixed emotions”? Go find Poplollies and Bellibones if you can, Sperling’s glorious 1979 celebration of lost words. It will also, for e.g., teach you the perfect epithet for a lascivious priest. He is a “smellsmock.”
(But I digress. Back to the sunshine.)
Yes, sunshine! So I walk myself down to the Olympic Village dock, to wait for the next False Creek ferry. My vague plan is to ride it west to Granville Island, and then walk my way back east to home.
Warmth + sunshine = other people also waiting for a ferry, several with toddlers and strollers.
One child, surely age four at most, turns into Boy Busker: he reinvents the popular children’s song as “The ferry on the creek goes round and round…” and then spins off into his own sing-song about up-and-down tides and repair boats and how you have to be quick-quick when the ferry arrives.
We applaud. He tells us sternly that he hasn’t finished. Abashed, we still our hands and wait for more. But then the ferry does arrive…
and everybody (including Boy Busker, turquoise helmet) climbs on board.
Not so very quick-quick. There are strollers to off-load first, and then three strollers to on-load, plus an unwieldy skateboard, and many questions for the patient ferry operator to answer. But it all happens, and away we go.
A lone canoeist skims by, just off Coopers’ Park…
and I admire yet again the multiple and largely smooth and peaceful uses of this public waterway.
We approach the Granville Island dock, welcomed as always by the Giants mural, spray-painted across the six silos of Ocean Concrete for the 2014-16 Vancouver Biennale. They begin to show their age, but I am cheered by the little banner announcing their upcoming “renewal.”
We climb up the long zig-zag ramp used at low tide, and pass by another inevitable welcome to the island: crows!
I’m almost tempted to tour market shops, but don’t. I’m here to start a walk.
So instead I turn south-east-ish into Sutcliffe Park, which wraps this side of the island, and head for the Seawall. My route takes me past an imposing piece of industrial-heritage equipment that I cannot explain, because there is no explanatory sign to be found.
But it is indeed imposing, is it not? Complete with raised scrollings that were either intrinsic to the original industrial purpose or are recent artistic additions, and I can’t explain them either.
But then… Something that explains itself. Lots of signage.
I’m at the Granville Island pavilion, here on Alder Bay, of the Trans-Canada Trail. It is just one dot on a Trail that runs 28,000 km coast to coast to coast throughout the country, and is, if this website claim is still true, “the longest network of multi-use recreational trails in the world.”
Off I go, happy with sunshine and a trail beneath my feet. As I pass the point where Alder Bay merges with False Creek, I am also happy with an official “view corridor.”
Back in 1989, City Council voted to protect specific public views and view corridors, to ensure that despite city growth, at designated spots we would still have a clear view through to the North Shore mountains.
See them? Back there through the towers toward the right?
There are lots of closer and unofficial views as well. This clump of Common Foxglove, for example, that has established itself in handy crevices in the Creek’s riprapping.
Every part of this plant is toxic, I later read. I knew anyway: it was the favourite poisoning device of all those Golden Era murder mysteries I used to read. (It is beautiful, though!)
Signage at Spruce Harbour Marina includes old photos of the Creek in its dirty, polluting, industrial heyday, when great booms of logs (here, 1912)…
covered the waters, waiting to be milled.
Look around now, and the waters are covered with boats.
But a more interesting collection of boats than I originally thought, for this marina is home to the Greater Vancouver Floating Home Co-operative. Most of these boats are permanent homes, though the marina also welcomes visitors.
Farther east, down by Charleson Park, I stare at the pond…
and contrast all this water with the dried-up mud flats I remember horrifying me, one year when we were in the middle of a category 5 drought. Look at it, the result of all our recent rain.
The signage patiently reminds us this is a seasonal wetland, and it is supposed to dry up periodically, that’s how it works. Got it?
Yah-but, I mutter to myself, meanwhile I’m happy to see all that water.
Finally I’m back to where I set off, Olympic Village. Or, to Millennium Water Olympic Village, in the official words of the plaque by this commemorative installation.
This immediate cluster of buildings, which initially served as the athletes’ village for the 2010 Winter Olympics & Paralympics, was North America’s first LEED Platinum community, and a catalyst for the reinvention/rejuvenation of the larger area.
The reinvention continues, and features considerable development of new residential complexes.
Like all these.
But notice also all that green space.
In the rear, a Pollinator Meadow, with species introduced for that purpose, and here in the forefront, a bioswale. ??? Fortunately, a bright blue sign tells me it is not just a ditch, it is a deliberate creation that collects one-third of all the rainwater falling on public spaces in Olympic Village, thus diverting it from the sewer system and mitigating any pollutants before the water empties into False Creek. (And if that makes you want to know more about the City’s rainwater strategy, click here.)
I’m about to weave between towers and head for city streets, but stop at one more bit of stubborn wild greenery. The City may be busy with planned & managed pollinator meadows and bioswales and all — and hurray for that — but nature keeps plonking herself where she wants to go.
Even smack in front of the next planned burst of exclusive waterfront residences.
23 May 2024 – Not my personal afternoon, you understand: a borrowed afternoon I don’t yet know I am about to experience.
At the moment I am lost in wonder that the traffic roar of King-George-meets-88-Avenue is so effectively muted by the tall trees of Bear Creek Park. The park is not large, the intersection is just steps away, and yet…
I hear bird song in the trees above, and the gurgle of water below as the creek tumbles its way through all those rocks.
This moment in nature is a fitting preface to my visit to the Surrey Art Galley, for a retrospective of the works of Japanese-Canadian printmaker Takao Tanabe. Born in 1926, Tanabe was interned during WWII, and therefore had to overcome many obstacles before he managed to attend art school in Winnipeg post-war. He went on to build an impressive career, and he is still active today, from his Vancouver Island base, and still in demand.
I move fairly quickly past the hard edges and colours of his 1960s abstractions (works of their time!) and settle with awe into his later, quieter, more contemplative exploration of the natural world that surrounds him.
He captures the prairies (here, Prairie Hill and Cloud, 1980)…
and, with equal resonance, the waters and islands of our west coast (here, Queen Charlotte Islands, the obsolete name for Haida Gwaii reflecting the 1988 date of this work).
I’ve been lost in the works, not thinking about how they make their way from sketch pad to final print. Then I turn into a second room, dominated by three long tables, two of them visible here. Together, they tell the hidden story of that print visible on the end wall: Nootka Afternoon, 1993.
Confession: I am not always very patient with tables of background material! However, I do at least read the key signage. Which, obediently, I do for this grouping as well.
And I am fascinated. Fascinated by the long partnership of these two artists, and all the dimensions of respect embodied in that partnership. Respect for each other, for nature, for art, and for the materials and processes and patient time with which they translate nature into art.
So I do not walk past these three tables. I linger. I move, in my own act of respect, from table to table, block to block.
I also amuse myself with some silly time/space math: daily x 3 months = (1+1+1+1+1+1) = 6 wooden blocks + 20 colours = 1 Nootka afternoon.
Count it out.
One…
and one…
and one…
and one…
and one…
and one.
That’s six.
Together, with the depth of three months and 20 colours, they capture one Nootka Afternoon.
Please note this is not my photo. The combined limitations of my photography and gallery lighting threw annoying reflections into my every attempt. I downloaded this image from the Kelowna Art Gallery website — entirely appropriate, since the Kelowna gallery organized the current exhibition, which further benefited from Ian M. Thom as guest curator.
20 May 2024 – Three days of a holiday weekend; three outings; three images for each.
Friday, Sunset Beach, English Bay Seawall
We’re walking the Seawall along English Bay toward Stanley Park and stop — as always! — to admire Berard Venet’s Vancouver Biennale sculpture” 217.5 Arc X 13.
Thirteen arcs of unpainted corten steel, each curved, as the title explains, to 217.5 degrees. Entirely static, endlessly dynamic, always welcoming.
We watch this little girl explore the sculpture…
and then follow her lead, offering those 217.5° arcs our own 360° tribute.
By now the sculpture, acquired in 2007, fully illustrates artist Venet’s point re his choice of material:
unpainted, the steel “facilitates an interaction with the natural elements.”
At their centre, the arcs form an embrace. At their tips…
a continuing dance of call and response.
Sunday, outside Engine 374 Pavilion, Roundhouse Community Centre
I learned about this event during my recent crosstown walk on Davie Street, and here I am, happy to join the anniversary celebrations. On 23 May, 1887, steam engine 374 pulled the first scheduled transcontinental train past Port Moody, following the new track extension all the way to Vancouver. “Ocean to ocean,” at last.
The rest of the year, CPR Engine 374 sits inside her protective pavilion. But! Once a year! Once a year, on the anniversary of that first arrival, she struts her stuff outdoors.
Oh, she gleams.
All black and white and powerful moving parts…
and shining brass and dates and tiny details…
and lots and lots and lots of live steam.
Monday, Waterfront Esplanade, New Westminster
A wonderful long walk along this stretch of the Fraser River, at very low tide.
The intricate world of mud flats, plus the occasional tree trunk…
and old pier stumps and scavenging crows…
and… and…
a reminder that trains are still part of this country’s lifeblood.
Leaving the Esplanade for downtown New West takes only a moment — only the moment needed to cross one street. But that moment becomes many, many moments when we all have to wait while a thumping great tri-continental freight train (from Mexico on up) claims its right of way.
"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 