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.
,
WALKING WOMAN 