24 February 2026 – Rays of sunshine flashing all over the place, and colours bouncing around with them.

Well, no, not literally. But it looks, it feels, like that.

I stand at the intersection of E. Broadway & Main, deliberately missing two green lights, transfixed by the transformation of the Yarn Bomber’s “Be Kind” slogan and companion heart.

After years of exposure, the colours have faded and the wool is bedraggled. Construction screening now hides all that, and today’s sunshine throws us the words and image in dramatic, high-contrast relief.

Moments later I turn into the alley that will lead me to the Salvation Army drop-off centre, my eye primed for the bounce of light, colour and shadow.

Barely into the alley, and a perfectly ordinary wooden staircase delivers all that.

A few more steps, and look: green/yellow wooden pole, blue/pink/black garbage bins beyond, and down there in the distance, the turquoise blunt end of a Sally Ann truck. (I just have to stand in this ramshackle alley and look around. Colour smacks me in the eye.)

Even this tattered fabric car-shelter is on the bounce. Metallic silver, varying shades of blue in the window panel, and a vivid yellow RESERVED on the pavement for extra impact.

How fitting that right at the Scotia St. end of the alley, just where I turn into the Sally Ann compound, I find the splashiest colour bounce of all: this 2020 VMF mural, Vancouver: a People-Powered Future. (I later learn the artist, Oakland Galbraith, is only 12 years old at the time, which makes it even more wonderful.)

Next day, more sunshine, more bounce — starting with my own slight geographic bounce, down to the Devonian Harbour Park on Burrard Inlet at the edge of Stanley Park.

I happen to think the park’s signature sculpture installation is OK-fine, but not outstanding. Today, in all this blazing sunshine, it is outstanding. Today, there is nothing solo about Solo (Natalie McHaffie, 1986); it offers a whole conversation among its elements.

Neon-bright turquoise cedar panels play against stainless steel framework that seems to ripple in the light…

and, together, they throw sharp black outlines against the green grass.

Later, at the eastern end of my walk, I eye the bright edge to each peak on the Canada Place fabric roof…

and realize the sun can throw sharp white outlines just as easily as black.

Clever old sun.