25 February 2025 – And in this corner, ladies and gentlemen…
Kid Ivy!
The newest welterweight sensation, poised against the ropes in his corner, waiting for the bell to ring.
And In This Corner…
Posted by icelandpenny on 25 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/25/and-in-this-corner/
Off-Season Drizzle
20 February 2025 – The month and the day pose the question:
Q: We think about tourist attractions in all their high-season dazzle — but what are they like, in off-season drizzle?
A: I head for Granville Island, magnet for tourists and locals alike. The month is off-season, the day is off-weekend, and the weather is definitely drizzle.
I leave the bus with the driver’s tourist-friendly patter still in my ears: Follow Anderson Street under Granville Bridge, it will lead you onto the island, and when you want to return to wherever you came from, the bus stop is right across the street — see? just over there.
Good patter, but not needed today. Only one possible tourist alights with me.
Anderson Street, its car lanes and sidewalks routinely thronged with traffic, is virtually empty.
All those rental bikes, still locked in their slots!
Ditto for the rental water bikes, tied up in Broker’s Bay.
But mid-week off-season has its uses. It is a good time for maintenance, for example, whether to Granville Bridge overhead…
or, inside Net Loft boutiques like this hat shop…
a good time for staff to catch up on pesky chores, and have a bit of a chat.
Despite some people eyeing the hats, this saleswoman agrees “it’s pretty quiet,” and she can finally spend a few moments scratching the stubborn label off a vase she wants to use for display purposes. We gossip amiably about my favourite hat brand (Tilley, that’s a plug), I resist her wheedling to try on one of the latest arrivals, and off I go.
To have another bit of amiable gossip in the Market Kitchen Store.
About cats.
“What’s with cats this month?” asks the saleswoman, puzzled. “We always have these mini-spatulas, but suddenly there’s cat themes all over the place.” I concur, and tell her about the book I had just noticed on prominent display in Paper-Ya — entitled What Do Cats Want? and written (says the blurb) by “Japan’s leading cat doctor.”
Despite respectably full parking lots, the Island’s streets and plazas are nearly empty. The fire pit blazes away outside Tap & Barrel, but any customers have parked their bottoms inside, warm & dry.
Kiosk tent-tops glisten…
a hardy duo hunch shoulders slightly as they check the ferry-dock map…
a hardy gull claims a parking lot perch…
and, hardy as I may personally be, this puddle tells me the obvious:
the drizzle is on its way to downpour.
And I say, Basta.
A wet day in the off-season is a very good time to visit the shops — you can chat and look about in a more leisurely way — but, finally, wet is wet, and it’s getting wetter.
One last discovery, as I walk back south on Anderson, heading for the bus stop.
This poster.
It’s the perfect end to this little story, is it not?
(On the bus I admire a child’s unicorn raincoat, complete with twisted horn on the hood. But… no. That would launch a whole other story.)
🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
Posted by icelandpenny on 20 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/20/off-season-drizzle/
“Today in the Garden”
17 February 2025 – Only a few days since my Frozen post, and the city has unfrozen itself. I’m off to meet friends at the VanDusen Botanical Garden, where we’re hoping for early-spring blossoms.
We arrive with hit lists: turns out we each lingered at the “Today in the Garden” displays on the way in, where volunteers regularly display sprigs of what’s seasonal, and cross-reference their suggestions to map locations.
It gives us a tempting and manageable list: Witch Hazel, Dogwood, Winter Aconite, Cornelian Cherry and the wonderfully exotic-sounding Dragon-s Eye Pine — plus, of course, whatever else comes our way.
The day is mild-ish and misty, with a barely perceptible drizzle in the air. Evergreens are dark against the sky as we veer right at Livingstone Lake…
and head for our first targets, along the Garden’s Winter Walk.
And there they are. Witch Hazel…
fiery Dogwood branches…
and a discovery we didn’t know we were going to make, the Ghost Bramble.
Even pruned back for winter, it’s easy to see how it got its name. In behind, another discovery — at least for me — the American Holly (on the left), with bright yellow berries rather than red.
The buds of the Cornelian Cherry are also bright yellow, though still very small and tightly furled.
We leave the Winter Walk, cut cross-country toward Heron Lake with a further target in mind — but are reminded, en route, that you don’t always need new growth for winter interest.
Sometimes, as the American Beech points out, all you have to do is hold on to your old leaves from summer.
Two more en-route bonuses: mist droplets glistening on the Giant Sequoia needles overhead…
and pretty little Winter Aconite buds bursting through leaf litter underfoot.
Plus — because I always notice — winter moss. This lot is on a wonderfully gnarled Something.
I don’t note the tree name; I’m too besotted with the moss to bother.
And then we’re across the zigzag footpath over Heron Lake, up the trail, and coming out the far end of the rocky tunnel that leads us to the Heath Garden.
Pretty as this garden-room is — and it is very pretty, all those heaths and heathers in all their jewel tones — it is not why we’re here. We’re hunting something at the periphery, over by the Laburnum Walk.
We want the Dragon’s Eye Pine.
And we find it!
With its bursts of green and white, it holds its own against the the birch, holly and evergreen backdrop.
More displays of moody evergreen needles against a moody sky…
and finally we’re circling back along the edge of Livingston Lake, with lunch by now uppermost in mind.
Until, that is, we see what the gardeners have done with the winter-yellowed ornamental grasses that cover the lake-side slope. They could have just let the the weary old blades flop on the ground. Or they could have cut them down and hauled them away.
But, no!
They braided them. Clump by clump, spiral by spiral.
We are properly delighted. We forget all about food as we discover the many varieties of grass-sculpture that inventive weaving can create.
When we do finally head off to lunch, we are in very good humour indeed.
Posted by icelandpenny on 17 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/17/today-in-the-garden/
Frozen
14 February 2025 – Not viciously frozen-frozen — not like most of the rest of Canada, right now — just the benign Vancouver version of frozen.
Just cold enough, and cold enough long enough, that snow still covers the ground, and…
even Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park lies still and silent beneath a layer of ice.
It’s that stillness, that hold-the-breath absolute stillness, that I remember from the colder winters I knew in eastern Canada. It is as much a mood as a physical sensation, and it is with me again as I walk the Lost Lagoon trail, heading from the Burrard Inlet side over to English Bay.
Snow on the ground, long shadows high-contrast black against the snow, snow-shards sitting atop the Lagoon instead of melting into it…
and even an “Ice Unsafe” notice pounded into the ground, this being one of the very rare occasions it needs to be pulled out of storage and put to use.
My trail leads me away from the shoreline, into the woods, shows me yet again how much bright beauty is to be had, when winter sun blazes in the sky.
It sparks against moss on a tree branch…
against this tree trunk…
and it spotlights an impromptu snowman, shining in the field beyond a wayside bench. The bench is currently irrelevant; the snowman is, literally, in his element.
Signage tells me I’m walking through the Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden. Sure enough, next to this magnificent old tree stump (bearing what may be the cut of a long-ago lumberjack)…
I see valiant little rhodo buds, already peeking out at the world. It seems madness to me, but I’m not about to argue with Mother Nature.
Ice, snow, stillness… and then… and then I’m out the other end of the trail.
Here at English Bay, all is motion.
Melting snow, grazing geese and, below me, tidal waters lapping gently to shore.
Usually I drop down to the Seawall. Today I stay here, on higher ground, taking in a broader perspective. I walk my way back into the city, still with water to one side, but with towers and urban life to the other.
On down Beach Avenue, and the long view opens up before me: Morton Park with its A-Maze-ing Laughter bronze sculptures, its palm trees, its geese, its flags, and, as backdrop, Doug Coupland’s Sunset Beach Love Letter, the mural embracing that refurbished apartment building toward the right.
I cut across a corner of Morton Park. It rewards me with a closer look at the geese, the laughing bronze figures beyond the palms, the flags snapping in the breeze…
and the colours and textures of a sleeping Canada Goose.
A utility box at Denman and Pendrell — all splashy with an Andrew Briggs’ mural — tells me I’m seriously back in the city.
I have plans for Denman Street! Somewhere along here there’s an Aussie pastry-pie place, and I want to find it again. I pass a whole globe’s-worth of culinary invitations along the way, but I keep walking, and I am rewarded.
Because here it is: a café-cum-hole-in-the-wall named Peaked Pies.
The menu offers a range of Savoury Pies (from kangaroo meat to vegan) which, should you choose to pay the premium, can be transformed into Peaked Pies. The term is descriptive. The “peak” is what results when you take the pie as base, and then pile on mashed potatoes + mushy peas + torrents of gravy.
Like this:
I almost can’t believe I agreed to all that — but I did, didn’t I?
Later, back home, I could have cropped this image to just the PP, but I want you to see the rest. It shows how neighbourly this little café was, when I happened to drop in, and I suspect that’s typical.
The elbow in the background belongs to a young mother, murmuring loving silliness at her baby in between mouthfuls of her own PP; baby is gurgling approval back at her. The helmet belongs to the Aging Geezer sitting farther down this communal bench from me, who is deep in conversation with the Younger Tablemate chance-seated next to him. Each, from their very different age-point, is encouraging the other to follow their dreams as they navigate their respective next stage of life. When they part, it is with reciprocal thanks for the conversation.
My peaked pie is good, true comfort food on a nippy day. And the mood in that café is a comfort as well.
We can all use a bit of comfort.
Posted by icelandpenny on 14 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/14/frozen/
Thar She Snows!
9 February 2025 – Snow right here in Vancouver. Still! Urban snow-adventures abound.
I’ve already shown you an adorable snowman in our local Dude Chilling Park, but I should have realized that… somehow… given we’re in Vancouver and all… a snowman isn’t quite good enough.
What we need is a snow whale.
(With thanks to FM, my whale-spotter friend extraordinaire.)
Posted by icelandpenny on 9 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/09/thar-she-snows/
Branded
4 February 2025 – Snow! It’s a Canadian brand, eh?
What with one thing and another, we Canadians are into our brands, these days. Even sea-level, rain-forest Vancouver has rallied to the cause.
Snow in Dude Chilling Park.
One snowman complete to the last pine cone; another snowman under construction; assorted kiddies squealing their way down the park’s modest hillock on sleds; the Yarn Bomber’s crochet heart on the fence wearing its own snow beret.
And — again, what with one thing and another — the perfect brand on the snowman’s tuque.
🎶 “True north, strong and free…” 🎶
A message, eh? (To any thug-bully who happens to need the reminder.)
Posted by icelandpenny on 4 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/04/branded/
Wind, Water, Light
2 February 2025 – Let’s hop back a few days.
Let’s ignore this morning’s sloppy snow (cleared from the fern by my loving fingers but slumping off the chair all by itself)…
and let’s ignore yesterday’s sullen drizzle that had this would-be patron waiting in vain for someone to open up the Espresso Bar at False Creek and start serving coffee.
Let’s instead revisit January 29.
It is a breezy-clear day that rewards a walk along the Coal Harbour stretch of Burrard Inlet — even if afternoon light is already fading by the time I reach this installation, which overlooks the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre from its spot beside Vancouver Convention Centre West.
I’ve seen it before, always liked it a lot, but today, I pay more attention to it. I start reading the signage. I learn the artist is Vancouverite Doug R. Taylor, who has “a passion for building whimsical mobiles that reflect the storyline of a site.”
The more I read, the more I understand what this means. And understand there’s more going on here than artistic whimsy.
The site, in fact, is directly opposite, not here — past the float plane activity, over there on the north shore where sulphur piles mark one of the many terminals that comprise the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.
What we have on this side, in this Wind Wheel Mobile, is a memorial to the workers who loaded asbestos over there for so many years.
This mobile is Taylor’s way of working with that history, and those consequences.
I give it a moment, I do, and then I walk on.
I am almost immediately captivated by another storyline — this one created by the dance between the two sites now in front of me. Orange harbour cranes, down there on the left, bounce a fiery explosion across Convention Centre windows, here on the right.
I keep walking, treat myself to a closer look at the reflection, which by now has only the peaks of Convention Centre East to play with. (Plus one swooping gull.)
And then, very well satisfied with wind, water and light, I go on home.
To wait for the snow.
Posted by icelandpenny on 2 February 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/02/wind-water-light/
“Why is ice?”
26 January 2025 – It is a brilliant, chilly day. It is officially capital-C Chilly as well — I’ve just watched stragglers crossing the Chilly Chase finish line at the False Creek seawall in Olympic Village.
Now I’m leaning on the railing that edges the rivulet flowing through Hinge Park into False Creek.
My mind is on those red berries, lower left.
The toddler next to me has a different preoccupation. She is looking through the reeds to what lies below.
“Why is ice?” she asks.
I can hear the smile in her father’s voice as he answers, “Because it’s cold.”
And I know, just as surely as he does, what comes next.
Sure enough! “Why is cold?”
Away they go, down the rabbit hole of “Why?”
I move on, full of respect for the endless patience of loving parents, as they help their little ones begin to make sense of the universe.
Posted by icelandpenny on 26 January 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/01/26/why-is-ice/
Of Snowdrops & Elephants
23 January 2025 — My legs want to go celebrate the relatively balmy temperature (4C) and the lack of anything heaving down at us out of the sky. Rough plan: bus rides to Morton Park on the edge of Stanley Park; my own two feet back through the West End on the Comox-Helmcken Greenway to downtown; a visit to the Outsiders and Others art gallery on Howe; and then … well I don’t know. It’ll sort itself out.
Fun, right from the first bus ride.
Old geezer hops on, sporting a grubby old hockey sweater bearing this logo:
I squeak with delight, shake two-thumbs-up at him, and soon we’re deep in our old-geezer memories about Rocket Richard, Boom-Boom Geoffrion and other heroes of the 1950s/60s Montreal Canadiens hockey team. I bail, to catch my Beach bus on out to Morton Park, but the hockey talk continues: he and another geezer start arguing the merits/stupidity of current Vancouver Canuck team strategy.
Second bus ride is as larky as the first. We would-be passengers put in an extra 30 seconds at the stop while the approaching driver brakes and waits for a solitary gull to walk — very, very slowly — across Station Street in front of the bus. We climb on board cheering the driver.
(He later proves equally considerate of human life forms, making a safe but illegal stop that allows an elderly lady to get off a bit closer to her destination, the Aquatic Centre.)
So I am buoyant with good humour and confidence in the day, as I turn turn off Davie Street onto Bidwell to walk on over to the Greenway. Right at the corner, I’m charmed by Fiona Dunnett’s design for the City utility box, with its happy musicians in a local park…
and I am equally charmed by the message I see on a stickie pressed to the top of the box, on the other side.
More street art, or at least street-viewed art, at Bidwell & Pendrell, where the base for the fence around Lord Roberts Elementary School bears design work by its 2016/17 students.
At Comox, I join the Greenway. The intersection is marked a pair of comfy black chairs (prudently bolted into place) — a repeating feature of this corridor, with its emphasis on restful human interaction.
This pair has an impromptu addition: a decidedly unofficial, and decidedly battered, wooden chair left by some anonymous donor. It is not bolted into place!
Street-side gardens everywhere, even if, mid-winter, there are more bare branches and bare earth than plants. This plaintive notice near Nicola, for example, seems unnecessary…
but no, I’m wrong.
Half a block on down the street…
I see my first snowdrop of the year.
The accelerating trend to glossy new towers, so visible on Davie Street, is less apparent here. Here so far, and this far west, architecture is older, smaller-scale and somehow more restful. A vintage brick apartment building faces an only slightly newer wooden equivalent at Comox and Broughton.
Volunteer-tended Green Streets gardens are prevalent — a feature here, as elsewhere, of the City program to promote greenery in (and I quote) “traffic-calming spaces.” Often accompanied by benches or pairs of those black chairs, the garden surroundings are indeed calming. You don’t have to love jargon to love the result.
Though sometimes, as in this garden at Broughton, I don’t much love the aesthetic, either.
But then… ohhhh, I get over myself. What’s not to love about gnomes & plastic owls & toads & toadstools & bunny-rabbits & watering cans & even a startled bird atop a column of improbably turquoise plastic vine?
Furthermore, there are gardens I really like a lot. So there.
Like the one at Jervis.
No… more precisely, like the brightly daubed fire hydrant next to this garden. With its elephant on top. (I did promise you an elephant, here he is.)
I’m also very fond of this garden near Bute, with its bike-wheel tribute to the joys of cycling.
Right at Bute, not a garden, but another expression of community and joy and creativity.
Chalk art.
I don’t know who Baba and Addy are, but this young artist wishes them well, and so do I.
I’m on the diagonal now, slicing through Nelson Park, passing between happy dogs in the off-leash park on my right and happy kiddies in the playground of Lord Roberts school annex on my left. I meet Bella, a slightly skittish Pomeranian/Husky cross, who eventually decides I am to be trusted and gives my hand a nuzzle. Her owner reaches the same conclusion, and allows me to feed her a treat. All three of us are pleased with the encounter.
I pause at a tree. It has pussy-willow-ish catkins on it, though I don’t know for sure that’s what they are. Anyway, that’s not why I pause. It’s the ornament that stops me. The world’s tiniest baby rain boot, bright green and adorable, dangles from a branch. Some infant kicked it off, and some later pedestrian has hung it high, in hopes the parent will come searching and find it.
Once on Nelson Street, I’m heading for the business/entertainment/financial district — serious downtown. At Burrard, the Wall Centre rises tall. It’s arresting in its own right, even more arresting as it throws Gaudí-esque reflections of buildings opposite.
Still arresting when I’m right in front of it, fountain spray adding further dynamics to the scene.
One last image: the quiet majesty of Arthur Erickson’s Law Courts Complex, seen from Nelson at Hornby…
before I turn onto Howe, make my visit to Outsiders and Others, with its decidedly different sensibility, and finally walk on north to Pender Street and my bus ride home.
No hockey sweaters or hockey talk, this time — instead, a loving young father gurgling nonsense at his toddler son. Everyone within earshot is as charmed as the baby.
Posted by icelandpenny on 23 January 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/01/23/of-snowdrops-elephants/
Frost on the Shoreline
20 January 2025 – We’re in a cold snap. Nothing like the extremes back East, just temperatures hovering below/above zero from night to day — low enough to set the hoar frost blooming early each morning.
Including along the Shoreline Trail, the pretty little trail in Port Moody that runs between Rocky Point Park and Old Orchard Park, cupping the eastern end of Burrard Inlet as it goes.
As I wait for my companion outside the SkyTrain station, I realize the oak leaf on the artwork at my feet and my own fingertips are in agreement: there’s a bite in the air.
But it dances through a blazing bright sky, and it is magical.
Hoar frost sparkles on the boardwalk across a marshy inlet…
encircles an ice-rimmed pond…
and sweeps across the entire marshland, right to the creek whose waters steam gently in the sun.
We cross mudflats on this rebuilt boardwalk, and agree it is much safer and more accessible than its wonky predecessor and is therefore A Very Good Thing — but also agree we miss the charm of that predecessor.
Then we quite rightly stop being such ingrates, and settle down to enjoy ourselves.
A waterfront blind farther along offers a chance to watch wildlife unobserved…
though at the moment we see only the stumps of old pilings, remnants of the McNair Cedar Mill that once operated here.
I’ve visited the mill site on previous Trail walks; tide is low enough to allow us to explore it today as well.
Only later online do I both learn the name of the mill and also see this 1925 photograph of the mill in operation. (Thank you Tessa Trethewey, for posting this photo on the I Love Port Moody blog on April 25 last year.)
Before we rejoin the Trail, I stop to admire this ziggurat, meticulously constructed from old mill bricks still lying around on-site. (I think for a moment, by ricochet, of the ephemeral clean-fill sculptures created out on Toronto’s Leslie Spit, by visitors who celebrate what lies to hand.)
Back on the Trail, what we have to hand is a collection of nature’s own tree-sculptures.
Companion burls high up one trunk…
and a whole lot of winter moss. An old scar, cushioned in moss, for example…
great rounded folds of bark rising from a mossy base…
and a moss-splattered tree that stands politely to one side as we look across reeds and marshes, across Burrard Inlet itself, to the mountains and distant snow peaks.
Warmed by the growing strength of the sun and also our own exertions, we decide we have more than earned lunch.
We retrace our steps, greeting hikers and patting dogs as we go, and settle into generous servings of Mexican comfort food. Our cheerful waitress, a rose tattoo peeping out from under her left cuff, says it is the perfect day to walk the Shoreline Trail.
We agree with her.
Posted by icelandpenny on 20 January 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/01/20/frost-on-the-shoreline/
Walk, Talk, Rock… B.C.-style
Since 14 August 2014
WALKING WOMAN 