31 July 2025 – I’m on the N/E corner of Quebec St. and East 2nd Ave., and I read the little plaque at my feet.

Really??? I say — but very quietly, to myself. (No point startling others.)

Look up & I’ll see a rail yard? Or an elk? or a forest? or a convoy of Canada geese?

Pfft!!! (My genteel raspberry is also very quietly expressed, to myself.)

Rail yard is historic fact right here at False Creek, not current reality. The first CPR railway station opened in Vancouver in 1887, but the railway-related industrial era boomed after the World War I project to fill in the tidal flats of False Creek, from Main St. on east to Clark Drive, to provide a site for two new railway terminals and associated rail yards. Various changes along False Creek since then, most recently the transformation to parkland, Seawall and residential/knowledge industry occupation, triggered first by Expo 86 and then the 2010 Winter Olympics.

So, no, I am not going to see a rail yard from this street corner, no matter where I look. But I don’t care! I am all for looking, while I walk, not for stomping along in a trance. I am perfectly happy to be reminded to swivel my head and pay attention.

I start swivelling.

Look Up, East: the MEC building, a 2020 arrival in this historic neighbourhood…

and once again (spring 2025) back in Canadian ownership, though no longer a cooperative.

Look Up, West: an even newer new-build.

Look Sideways, East: the eco-conscious alley behind MEC, with watercourse and plantings to attract insects and bees.

Look Sideways, West: the alley behind that new-build, with an historic reference right there at the corner.

Namely, one of the City’s remaining H-frame hydro poles.

Look Down-Along, North: this block’s stretch of bioswale…

which “collects and cleans the rainwater that fall on Quebec Street.”

Look Straight-Across, West: tail end of a straggly crocodile of kiddies (yellow T-shirts) plus their volunteer monitors (green T-shirts)…

crossing Quebec and hurrying to catch up with the croc’s main body, all those children already walking on north along Quebec’s west side.

I have to wait for the next light. After that I’m following in their somewhat distant footsteps, not sure where they’re headed but with my own Best Guess in mind. (Science World, I think to myself.)

Sure enough!

Like them, I turn west on Switchmen St. — a necessary detour while the end bit of Seawall is under repairs — and, from my vantage point at Pullman Porter, watch all those yellow & green T’s double ’round the parking lot & veer back east toward the geodesic dome of Science World. (An aside to you: you have noted these further railway tributes? Of course you have.)

I am charmed by the sight — by my knowledge of how much fun the children will have, and by my respect for all the organizations and all the volunteer support that collectively make these vacation-time excursions both possible and safe. (Flashback memory: the impish YMCA volunteer in Toronto, who explained that when they took 10 kids out, they were expected to bring 10 kids back. “Preferably,” she solemnly added, “the same ten.”)

I head on west. Bye-bye, kiddies.

I am still sufficiently Paying Attention to my surroundings, to notice the fresh-fruit stand near Olympic Village Plaza. I buy strawberries, my fingers guided by the young attendant to the boxes just trucked in this very morning from a farm in the Abbotsford area.

The day is warming up.

I find a shady bench in Hinge Park, and allow myself one strawberry. Just one.

It was…

really, really good! I hustle back home with the rest.