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.)
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.
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.
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 GaudÃ-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.
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.
12 January 2025 – First, “D” for the Everything, Everywhere Doctrine, which has set its targets for 2025: Greenland, Canada, Panama.
It is beyond alarming & insulting, it is surreal to hear the duly-elected incoming leader of a supposedly principled (and supposedly freedom-loving) country announce his intention to subjugate his neighbours — my country included.
Greenland he plans simply to buy, though upon questioning he explicitly does not rule out the use of military force. Canada he believes he can crush “by economic force.” Panama… well, the U.S. has a history of intervention in its southern neighbours, so there must be a long list of strategies already in the arsenal.
It is stirring, but not comforting, to read David Suzuki’s account (Toronto Star) of why he chose to return to Canada from the U.S. and why he hopes all Canadians “will fight to preserve our differences from [that other] great nation.” It is no comfort that some Americans (cf. this comment on my previous post by a Seattle-based reader) think that members of the incoming administration are “evil, twisted… and some are very stupid.” And it is no comfort to read that the subjugation plans are bound to fail (cf. Stephen Marche analysis, Maclean’s Magazine) since “at this point in history, America has come off 70 years of failed imperialist adventures.”
Even when the target nations are united and patriotic, even when the leaders of the aggressor nations are stupid and bungle their projects — even then — those projects still inflict great damage and suffering on the way through.
…
Shall we move on to a happier pair of D’s?
Doorways and Details
Fresh off a visit to a stunning exhibition in Equinox Gallery, I prowl my way back down this southern extension of Commercial Drive.
It is still home to vintage architecture and to small, independent shops and activities. Doorways are individual, and expressive.
and a small notice apologizes for the need to bar pets…
and offers a free “puppiccino” in compensation.
An adjacent door, barred and locked, appears unfriendly, but is deceptive.
It guards something very friendly indeed, a tool-lending library — “an affordable community-based alternative to personal tool ownership or tool rental.”
Sadly, its window detail, hard to read through bars and glare, suggests neighbourly puppiccinos may become a thing of the past.
“How can you call this a development when the only thing going up is my rent.” Later I see land-acquisition notices in front of other vintage properties, citing CD-1 zoning, i.e. Comprehensive Development.
Another, much smaller doorway, this time near the north end of a narrow linear park threading its way parallel to Commercial Drive, on down to East Broadway.
One Little Free Library door, with two heart-warming details. First, the pointillist celebration of whales on the door…
and, second, the introduction to Harmonious Joan taped to the frame inside. (You don’t need to be a ukulele player, to be glad that people like HJ exist.)
One final “doorway” for you, and note those punctuation marks of uncertainty.
I debate its inclusion, and then decide that, yessiree! it qualifies. True, it is an intersection…
but are not intersections the doorway to a pair of streets?
Anyway the detail, another of the city’s sidewalk mosaics, deserves attention…
even if I cannot find a reference to it anywhere and so cannot identify it for you.
All these small things — ordinary, everyday, and worth defending.
9 January 2025 — Current events flip my mind back 130 years, to an 1895 Punch cartoon, by Sir John Tenniel.
Master Johnny Bull asks, “Monroe Doctrine? What is the Monroe Doctrine?”
Master Jonathan (aka James Monroe) answers: “Wa-al — Guess it’s that everything everywhere belongs to us.”
In his December 2, 1823 address to Congress, President James Monroe articulated what was to be United States policy concerning the rest of the Americas.
“By the mid-1800s” — says the Office of the Historian, in its series Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations — “Monroe’s declaration, combined with the ideas of Manifest Destiny, provided precedent and support for U.S. expansion on the American continent…”
1 January 2025 – And what always tops the Resolution list?
Get more exercise.
Well… Vancouverites are on it already.
Yesterday, after my own get-some-exercise walk through Stanley Park and back toward town from Second Beach, I see this cluster of tents set up on the shores of English Bay.
Coming closer, I hear a deep-bass male voice doing sound checks, and then practising his “Happ-py new year, everybody!”
Coming right up to it, I see this is not prep for some dissolute New Year’s Eve blow-out. It is prep for a serious New Year’s Day feat of athletic endurance.
The annual Polar Bear Swim. Still underway as I write these words, but with years of tradition behind it.
Mind you, I’ve already had my own modest bit of exercise, this 1st day of the year!
Down to False Creek, just to say hello. Where there’s lots of exercise underway.
Including swimming.
All right, they do it year-round, but it counts.
As I follow that False Creek tributary through Hinge Park, I come to the playful little bridge connecting one side to t’other…
and then peer inside.
Where, at the far end, I see a father beginning to swing his little girl down-down-DOWN the steps to enter the bridge.
I meet them toward that far end.
She stamps her feet on the echoing deck, and giggles at me. I stamp my feet, and giggle right back at her. To her father’s vast amusement, she and I then have ourselves a foot-stamping contest. (And a giggle contest.)
Day 1 of a new year, and the exercise box is ticked!
"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 