17 August 2024 – Nothing as grand as the slippery nature of abstract nouns is on my mind. Not even the nature of heritage, within that slippery world.

I’ve simply decided to go look at the very specific, very tangible, very proper-noun Barclay Heritage Square that I’ve just noticed to the right of the caption WEST END on my Downtown Vancouver Walking Map. My route develops from there. I continue down Nicola to English Bay and along the Seawall to (bottom-centre of map) the David Lam Dock on False Creek.

It’s only after all that, that I have my moment of linguistic/philosophical fuss about the meaning of words.

Back to the beginning.

I’m at Broughton & Haro, north-east corner of Barclay Heritage Square, an enclave designated under the National Trust for Canada that preserves 12 Edwardian-era homes and woods in combination with an adjacent City park.

The houses are lived in…

and the woodland now contains a children’s playground, used by residents…

as well as families from the modern condo towers you can see in the background — the kind of towers now increasingly dominant in the West End environment.

For no particular reason, I make Nicola my route on south to the water. It rewards me immediately. I’m already a fan of Little Free Library kiosks & their unofficial equivalents, so I gurgle happily at the sight of this Pet Food Pantry, just past Barclay.

Wet & tinned dog & cat food are welcome donations, ditto dog & cat toys and accessories, but please nothing large and nothing for other small animals: “We don’t have the space.”

One more block, and here’s the Vancouver Mural Festival 2020 tribute (by Annie Chen & Carson Ting) to Joe Fortes, the City’s first official lifeguard.

In 1986 he was also named Vancouver’s Citizen of the Century by the Vancouver Historical Society, and for good cause — a Trinidadian immigrant, Fortes spent years unofficially guarding the beach and rescuing people before receiving the official appointment.

The Nelson-to-Comox block down Nicola is friendly underfoot…

and bright with flowers on vintage apartment balconies overhead.

The day grows steadily warmer. I am ever more appreciative of the shade offered by street-side trees, sometimes combined with lush ferns, as in this display near Pendrell…

and sometimes high over bare earth, as in this half-block interruption of Nicola’s vehicular status between Pendrell and See-em-ia Lane.

Yet even barren like this, it is a welcome space, a little spot just for people, very neighbourhood. The lane title is part of the charm: like other area lanes, it honours area history, in this case Mary See-em-ia, granddaughter of Chief Joe Capilano and a Squamish Nation matriarch.

A reminder as I cross Davie Street of real-estate trends…

and later a reminder, down at Harwood, of developer/cultural handshakes, here in the form of this Beyond the Mountains mural commissioned by the builder from Heiltsuk artist KC Hall.

On downhill to the water. I’m now at the foot of Nicola, about to emerge onto Beach Avenue, bordering Second Beach.

Apartments of various eras face the water, dozing in the afternoon sun…

and “open-air museum” installations, courtesy of the Vancouver Biennale, are as much part of the beach scenery as flowers, palm trees and sand.

I first pass Dennis Oppenheim’s Engagement…

and then, as I walk east along the Seawall…

I come to my all-time favourite, Bernar Venet’s 217.5 Arc X 13.

Not much shade, here on the Seawall.

I pause under handy palm trees to cool off, agree with a bemused pair of Austrian tourists that outdoor palms are somehow not what we expect to see in Canada…

loiter under the next cluster of friendly palms to watch a mother finally tear her toddler away from these lifeboats and lead the child on down to the water…

and then buy myself a rum & raisin waffle cone at the Sunset Beach concession stand…

and find yet more shade in which to enjoy it.

I even manage to eat it all without dribbling any down my arm. (Live long enough, and you acquire a few Life Skills.)

Enough blazing sunshine. I forsake the Seawall to climb uphill to Beach Ave. and the shade offered by its trees. It gives me a distant view of Squamish artist Chrystal Sparrow’s mural on the Sunset Beach sport court, currently being repainted…

and a close-up of the mossy walls of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre as I carry on east.

But then, somewhere between George Wainborn Park and David Lam Park — bottom-centre of that first Walking Map image, if you care to scroll back up — I return to the Seawall and False Creek.

Where I am first amused by this tiny, very unofficial, birdhouse hanging from an official Seawall tree…

and soon afterwards hopeful of a ferry ride home from the David Lam Dock.

Look at this: two ferries converging on the dock (left & right, the rival Aquabus and False Creek lines respectively), eager to pick me up.

But, no, we are at cross-purposes. I want east; they are both headed west to Granville Island.

They assure me an east-bound boat will come by soon. One does. It then steers a slow zigzag route, meeting rider needs — which gives me time to think about “heritage.”

What counts, what doesn’t? In today’s walk, did only the very official and historically designated Barclay Heritage Square count? Or all of it?

The online Cambridge Dictionary gives me the answer I realize I want: heritage consists of “features belonging to the culture of a particular society.”

Yes. With that kind of latitude, it all counts.

From the designated Edwardian homes to the Fortes mural to “hi” on a sidewalk and a Pet Food Pantry; from ice cream and real-estate trends and Biennale art to lifeboats and palm trees and a silly little birdhouse and rival ferry lines.

All of it.