2 February 2024 – The predicted torrents of rain didn’t take place, but it has been very drizzly. And very, very grey. Not the luminous grey that I so often celebrate, but a flat-matte grey that sucks contrast and depth from the scene.

Since it is double-digit mild as well as merely-moist-not-wet, I opt for a walk all along the Seawall from Devonian Harbour Park, at the edge of Stanley Park, to Canada Place downtown.

I am indeed “here,” right where it says I am, there at the lower left, and I set off.

But… how shall I put this… it is not very uplifting. Just a whole world of flat grey, merge-purging itself in blurry confusion out to the horizon. Our grand panoramic views are not at all grand, at the moment.

Well, sod the panoramic views. I shall instead look for details. Small, very bright details. In the red family, by preference.

And so I notice a bright orange bumper ring tucked around this boat in Bayshore West Marina…

a pair of red & mustard houseboats, punching through the polite blue & white of the Coal Harbour Marina…

a brazen life ring, admiring itself in the waters off Coal Harbour Quay…

a red & white seaplane, growling itself to life for its next run from the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre out to the Gulf Islands…

a long view from the Convention Centre, on east past Canada Place to orange cranes in the Port beyond, poised over a cargo freighter…

and Douglas Coupland’s Digital Orca, right here at the edge of Jack Poole Plaza, dancing the pixillated dance that has been its signature since 2009.

Where’s the red, you ask?

That witch hazel on the left, already in bloom.