6 April 2025 – Three images from the last two days, and the subsequent discovery that all three dance to the letter “W.”
Water…
and Wood…
and Wall.
This one embodies a more complicated bit of alphabet than its companions. At the time, any designation would have been “S-for-shadow.” Because… well, look at it. Look how that boring wire-mesh fence throws filigree shadow on the rusted corrugated metal.
Even if we boot “S” to the sidelines, we can still applaud this image as a triple-W, all by itself.
Wall, check.
Also, Warehouse, check. The rusty metal covers a ramshackle old warehouse on False Creek South, one I’ve eyed with fascination for the last seven years, wondering whether entropy or the bulldozer would finally bring it down.
Turns out: bulldozer. The cheerful young City employee padlocking a bit of the security fence told us that yes, the building is about to be razed — but the wood will be saved.
W for wood!
“Inside this metal crap, it’s all old-growth timber. Old growth! Still in good shape. We’ll be taking it apart piece by piece, because the City plans to reassemble it as part of an industrial-heritage display.”
No, he didn’t know how soon, or where. We then grimaced our mutual recognition of the best-laid plans of mice, men and civic authorities.
6 August 2024 — One day all crisp shadows down a local alley…
and the next, off to the “green calming atmosphere” promised in this sign welcoming visitors to Camosun Bog.
The bog is a tiny, boardwalked ecosystem at one north-east knob of sprawling Pacific Spirit Regional Park. I always choose the same entry point: south from West 16th Ave., down one final residential block of Camosun Street.
And here I am. I set foot on that entry stretch of boardwalk, and I am already calm.
Slower of pace, quieter of thought, I duck under an arch of Mountain Ash and walk around the bend beyond…
to pause at what I think of as “The Sentry” — a nurse stump adorned each season with whatever that season and its weather have to offer.
I next pause at the bog itself, now diminishing in the heat of mid-summer from its abundance of early spring.
Then, I follow the boardwalk.
The sphagnum mosses are beginning to bleach, responding to the same heat that shrinks the bog, but there are still bursts of vivid greenery.
Sometimes I need to peer over the inner railing of the boardwalk perimeter…
but any old time, I can just look over the outer railing at the forest beyond.
Loop complete, side trips complete, I retrace my steps to walk back under the arch of Mountain Ash. This time toward sidewalks, pavement, cars and traffic. Lots of grey awaits me. Lots of noise.
I’m not yet ready for West 16th! I walk eastward on quiet residential streets instead.
And I find myself at another tiny enclave of calm.
Right there, across that intersection, under those street-side trees: some Muskoka chairs grouped companionably around a little table.
I cross. I check it out. I discover that, just like the entry sign for Camosun Bog, the table welcomes visitors.
Though with an admonition.
I obey.
I take a seat. And when I depart, I leave the furniture where I found it.
6 October 2023 – Today’s rabbit-hole begins with a physical flash of pink, hops conceptually to the theme of loyalty, and scoops up a retired U.S. Army colonel and a Canadian pop-music icon in its digital trail before concluding with an Australian newsletter article quoting the 18th prime minister of Canada.
Here we go.
The flash of pink, glimpsed from almost a full block farther west, resolves into a graceful pair of bike racks at the intersection of Heather and West 10th.
I’m struck less by the racks than by their shadows. More precisely, the relationship between shadow and the object that creates it. “Ya dance with the one that brung ya,” I murmur, and have a quiet little giggle to myself. I am amused by the sudden memory, and applicability, of this folksy old Brian Mulroney aphorism about loyalty.
Shadows are loyal, are they not? They dance with the one that brung ’em.
Be it (as above) ovoid, or…
rectilinear, or…
lacey-loopy from a canopy of overhead leaves.
Back home, my old copy-checker training says, “Well, ummm, before throwing that attribution into a post, we’d best trace it to a documented source.” And down the rabbit-hole I go. It’s not that I think Mulroney invented the saying — it has anonymous folk wisdom all over it — it’s just that I want to verify he ever said it.
I shall spare you the many, oh the very many, slight variations on the wording, ranging from Good Grammar to Jes’ Plain Folks.
And I shall offer only two other sources before I circle back to Martin Brian Mulroney — the Baie-Comeau youngster who grew up to become a lawyer, a businessman and (1984-1993) a prime minister of Canada.
U.S. college football coach Darrell Royal thought it good advice, or so said a retired U.S. Army colonel in his 2016 article for Military Review, in which he offered career-transition guidance to Army professionals.
Lots more fun than that, back in 1993 Shania Twain released a song with those words as its title. The song became a hit single from her hit debut album, Shania Twain, and helped launch the career that has sold more than 100 million records and made the Timmins native one of the greatest country-pop artists of all time.
Then there’s the multitude of references to the phrase as a political adage — stay loyal to your party’s base — all of which credit Brian Mulroney as its source. Stylistically, they range from:
a purported dream sequence in a 2005 Globe and Mail Opinion piece by Bob Robertson (involving shower caps and some vigorous gigue-dancing with the Bloc Québécois), to
a stern 2016 Spectator Australianewsletter article by James Allan, which suggests that “Turnball’s Liberals have forgotten a wise old adage.”
So many options!
Personally, I vote for Shania Twain in my ears, and that bike rack in my eyes. But suit yourself.
19 August 2023 – Sometimes shadow is your umbrella.
On a still, muggy day, as the heat starts to build, it shelters you on your bench. Also shelters the alley-wolf opposite (artist Ben Tour, VMF 2016) as he guards some parked cars.
Sometimes shadow is a play-thing.
At high noon on a cool, bright-breezy day, it offers trees something to toss at any surface willing to join the game.
"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 