All posts tagged Vancouver Seawall

That Nice Mr. H

21 July 2025 – Busy morning, the day is clipping along, but surely there’s time for a short afternoon walk? I think False Creek (yet again), and then try to freshen the idea with a new combination of component parts.

Cranky Self objects: “I’ve already done all that!” Philosophic Self saves the day, quotes that nice Mr. Heraclitus: “You cannot step in the same river twice.”

Albeit by attribution, and much translated and much paraphrased, but the idea is clear. Everything (you included) is always all new, so go get it.

I haul out my much-creased False Creek map, and make a sort-of plan.

Walk down to The Village ferry dock (south-east end of False Creek, by Olympic Village Square); ferry to David Lam Park dock; walk on west along this portion of Vancouver’s Seawall, on past George Wainborn Park; then up-over the Granville Street bridge; down-around Granville Loop Park… and whatever.

The day is so mid-summer!

Music festival in the City Centre Artist Lodge forecourt as I walk past; patio umbrellas shading crowds on down Quebec & Ontario streets; and here in Olympic Village Square as well…

keeping all these customers cool, as well as one lop-eared dog (front & centre).

Onto an Aquabus, which is surprisingly empty until we stop at Yaletown Dock and pick up an extended family of Brazilian tourists. As we pull away, the driver, for fee-setting purposes, turns his head to quiz them on destination and demographics.

“Round-trip to Granville Island, six adults, two seniors and one child,” says the matriarch. She’s prompt with the data, but loses the credit-card quick-draw contest with one of her sons. She plays to her audience with a “What-can-I-do?” gesture, and is rewarded with amused laughter.

I hop off at David Lam; they carry on to the tourist (& resident) attraction that we call an “island,” even though it isn’t, not quite.

I’m always amazed at the diversity of traffic on and in the water — everything from whopping private vessels in the marinas to ferries to kayaks/dragon boats/paddle-boards to wildlife — and nobody seems to hit anybody else.

Even when they’re a couple moving very slowly on an isolated little paddle-board.

I turn my attention landward.

Thistles old & new, backed by ripening blackberries…

which cause a passing teen to tell her boyfriend about the berry patch behind her house, when she was growing up. “They’re awfully bitter until they’re really ripe,” she warns him.

The Seawall, like False Creek, has a mixed-use culture. Pedestrians here; cyclists there. In between David Lam & George Wainborn parks, I also get a good look at the Granville Street bridge, up ahead.

Closer still, almost opposite Granville Island, a good look at Giants — the six concrete silos painted for the 2014-16 Vancouver Biennale by the Brazilian twins known as OSGEMEOS, and now a lasting icon in the Biennale’s Open Air Museum.

This north-facing façade in shadows, mid-afternoon, but compelling even so.

Once I’m almost beneath the bridge, my next challenge is to find my way onto it.

Please, you’re thinking, how hard can that be? Not impossible, I grant you, but it does involve discovering that the west-side pedestrian path is closed for repairs, and orienteering my way up-along Weedland…

aka Waiting-For-Development-Land, to find the east-side path.

Which I do.

So here I am, heading toward centre bridge. With an overhead view of Creek traffic and a different angle on Giant.

Almost directly overhead, a reminder that this is a working concrete facility, not just a mural backdrop.

Starting down the bridge’s southern slope, I look back. Now I can enjoy the Giant‘s sunny faces and the long eastern view of False Creek behind them.

Over land now, over the Granville Island Kids Market and playground, backing onto Alder Bay.

More orienteering required, to get myself off this bridge!

I place my faith in this zebra crossing over these lanes, then this path and down these steps, and yes! it works.

I’m in Granville Loop Park, with a waterfall sculpture that reminds us yet again that, all those centuries ago, Heraclitus got it right. An ever-constant “V” of water, created by ever-changing water molecules, in ever-flowing cascades from the two upper corners.

Across the kiddy play area, with the yellow Coyotes in Area sign to my right and tennis players straight ahead…

and down and around and out to the West 2nd bus stop…

where, from a shady bench, I look up at the bridge I have just crossed.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 21 July 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 21 July 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/07/21/that-nice-mr-h/

Wind & the Great Two-Four

19 May 2025 – There is a big difference, I realize — as I anchor my hat — between a calm 15C and a 15C with gusts that smack you in the face.

I’m just off the bus at the edge of Stanley Park, planning a walk through the park to celebrate this holiday long weekend. (Held the Monday before 24 May, and, both officially and unofficially, a single holiday with many names.)

My plan, before the hat-anchoring, was to walk across Lost Lagoon, out to Second Beach, and then whatever. Hat now anchored, I see the virtues of a trail walk among sheltering trees instead.

So I say good-bye to Lost Lagoon, despite the attraction of this mama duck and her babies (just off the point of those rocks)…

and this Pacific Great Blue Heron, posing right next to the path…

and, instead, I pivot my footsteps onto Tatlow Walk.

I don’t usually take any of the forest trails, and how silly is that? Here’s a whole 400 Ha of western rainforest, and I stick to the Seawall. Not today!

Tatlow offers me a whole different experience. See? (Ignore “You are here” — we are in fact in the upper-right curve of Lost Lagoon, about to slice diagonally through the forest on Tatlow Walk, and emerge at Third Beach.)

Why don’t I do this more often? Thank you, wind, for blowing me inland.

There is greenery — new growth climbing all over the old…

and woodpecker activity — scavenging insects from old trees…

and colour — the rich red of the cedar itself and the lichens on the bark…

and even sound effects — the angled tree squeaks as high-level wind rubs it against the trees that support it.

In the glade where Tatlow crosses Bridle Path (scroll back to that handy map, I’ll wait…), I meet a ghost.

One of seven ghosts, the stumps of the Seven Sisters, the soaring mix of Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar that once stood here and were so popular with 19th-c visitors that they had their own dedicated trail.

Alas, by 1953…

they had to be honoured in a different way.

But the glade, like the rest of the forest, still has plenty of soaring verticals.

Side trails beguile…

but I look at the mud, and the bike ruts, and choose to stick with Tatlow.

At Stanley Park Drive, I wait for waves of holiday traffic to pass, cars as usual, but also motorcycle clusters and cyclists…

and then cross over. Within moments, here I am, about to emerge at Third Beach.

Where wind has free access, and white caps prove it.

Rocks, freighters (waiting their turn to enter the Port of Vancouver), and white caps. That’s the signature of my walk back down the Seawall.

Plus the occasional float plane silhouetted high against the clouds, snarling its way to, or from, the Flight Centre at Coal Harbour…

and crows swooping low across the beach…

and cyclists dismounting to navigate intersections with high-traffic walkways.

I take advantage of low tide, and walk the last stretch below the Seawall, down on the beach itself.

Just past park boundaries, I climb back up to Beach Avenue, Morton Park and…

a pop-up street fair. But of course. It’s a holiday weekend, isn’t it?

Quick browse in the fair, satisfying lunch on Denman Street (Indian, this time around), and a walk north on Denman, where the soaring verticals are quite different from those to be found in the park…

and, finally, a bus back home.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 19 May 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 19 May 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/05/19/wind-the-great-two-four/

Mind Plans; Feet Don’t Care

23 April 2025 – My mind has created a very clear plan for the morning.

Follow the Quebec Street bioswale — not a ditch! a rainwater gathering/purifying system! — to Science World, down there at False Creek…

do the interview; walk my usual “Cambie Loop” to and over the bridge; and then zigzag eastward back home.

I do the interview. (The Mystery Interview. Be patient, a post will follow.) I start walking west along the False Creek Seawall.

All according to plan.

Suddenly, where Carrall St. butts into the Seawall, my feet execute a sharp right-turn. They don’t even inform my mind, let alone ask permission. They just take mind (and the rest of me) hostage, and execute their own plan.

Away we go. I find myself walking north on Carrall.

I decide not to argue: this could be interesting! The route offers a tidy cross-town slice past Andy Livingstone Park, through Chinatown, on into the Downtown East Side (DTES) and Gastown, all the way to Water Street with Burrard Inlet just beyond.

Poignant, powerful street art at West Pender, by the impressive street artist and DTES resident/advocate, Smokey D.

“It’s by Smokey D,” I hear two street kids say to each other, their voices full of respect. The City agrees. In tribute to his concern for others and use of his skills to inform and empower others, in 2023 Vancouver proclaimed March 11 — his birthday — to be Smokey D Day.

Another downtown symbol at Water and Cambie streets, this one much happier in mood: Raymond Saunders’ 1977 Steam Clock, still puffing steam and, in another 10 minutes, due to mark 12-noon with the opening bars of O Canada.

By now my mind fully supports what my feet set in motion: this is a promising route! I even manage to rediscover the Silvestre café and reacquaint myself with its Peruvian menu — another mug of Chicha Morada (purple corn drink) but this time, a Chicharron sandwich (pork belly) rather than an Alfajor dessert.

At Richards Street, my feet graciously allow my mind some say in what happens next. Continue west another block or two? Or turn south right here? Right here, says my mind, and my feet pivot accordingly.

Yet more patriotic fervour in the Macleod’s window at Richards & West Pender…

and appropriately vintage in style, as befits this rare, used and antiquarian bookstore.

I cross Dunsmuir, where signage informs me that this next stretch of Richards is part of the City’s “blue-green rainwater system.”

The last panel of the sign is an illustration of the pavers involved in the system. The caption asks, “Do they remind you of water flowing towards the tree?”

I step out into the street, check the pavers.

Yes, they do.

Another happy rediscovery, a place I can never find on purpose. I just have to, literally, walk into it…

the joyous, multi-level Rainbow Park at Richards & Smithe.

Getting closer to False Creek with every step!

On past Emery Barnes Park at Davie, and then across Pacific Blvd., right to the tumbling fountains of George Wainborn Park, which slopes down to the Creek.

Eastward along the False Creek Seawall, past a swimming dog (and ball-tossing owner)…

and then I’m beneath the towering girders at the David Lam ferry dock. Each girder base is incised with a different story of time & place.

This one commemorates the Great Fire of 1886…

when, on June 17, an authorized clearing fire on CPR property blazed out of control and destroyed the infant city, whose wooden structures were no match for the wind and flames. In the words of one survivor: “The city did not burn, it simply melted before the fiery blast.”

And then I walk some more, on past the Cambie Bridge, on along to Coopers Mews, with its symbolic barrels on high. At this point, mind, feet and the rest of me all agree on our course of action.

We follow the Mews to Pacific Blvd., and catch a bus for home.

11 Comments
by icelandpenny on 23 April 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 23 April 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/04/23/mind-plans-feet-dont-care/

The Skunks of Spring

18 March 2024 – I’m in Stanley Park, along with half of all Vancouver it seems, ready to enjoy this weekend burst of double-digit sunshine.

More precisely, I’m off the bus, through the underpass, and poised at the south-west curve of Lost Lagoon…

about to walk counter-clockwise and follow the trail east along the lagoon’s north shore.

Everything trembles on the edge of spring, unfurling new growth. Trees overhead, trees weeping downward to the water.

And, down there in the water, in the rich muck of the wetland, most wonderfully of all…

the fluorescent glow of the Western Skunk Cabbage. My first of the season. Now I know it’s spring!

The eastern variety is a more modest creature, it seems, so I forgive myself for being entirely ignorant of this plant until I moved west and was smacked in the eye by all that gold. (And also educated by You-Know-Who-You-Are.) Now I look for it each year, and give a little wriggle of joy at the first sighting.

On across Lost Lagoon, and on and on and then, though still in Stanley Park, I’m in entirely another world. I’m in all the noisy facilities-rich hoop-la of Second Beach.

Right where this red button says I am:

I turn right, head up the Seawall toward Third Beach. (Thank you, I murmur to the universe. I am so lucky, to be right here, right now, in all this.)

Here we all are, in all this.

Runners…

and cyclists/loungers/kiddies/adults/impromptu tents/storm-thrown stumps on Third Beach…

and rocks and freighters just off Ferguson Point…

and a tree with a heart…

and a patch of Seawall with its very own Cat-Angel…

and — after I’ve walked myself back south out of Stanley Park and into Morton Park — four Vancouver icons. All on view without turning my head.

Background, the renovated Berkeley Tower with its Douglas Coupland mosaics; mid-ground, Yue Minjun’s Ah-Mazeing-Laughter sculpture installation; right mid-ground, a cluster of Windmill Palms; and, tucked in their foreground shadow, some Canada Geese.

The day has me in sensory overload.

Yet, with all that wealth of input, one image keeps coming back to mind.

The north shore wetland of Lost Lagoon, the dabbling duck above the mossy rock on the left, the Skunk Cabbage on the right, and all that tender new greenery shooting up everywhere in-between.

Spring.

5 Comments
by icelandpenny on 18 March 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 18 March 2024

https://icelandpenny.com/2024/03/18/the-skunks-of-spring/

Some Red in the Grey

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.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 2 February 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 2 February 2024

https://icelandpenny.com/2024/02/02/some-red-in-the-grey/

Pathways

16 November 2023 – I’m thinking about pathways. I like the very concept of “pathway” and all that it implies. The top quote on my blog home page is a reminder from poet-philosopher Antonio Machado that “paths are made by walking.” Pathways — physical, mental, spiritual — invite us to be curious, to explore, to discover, to resonate more broadly and deeply.

I’m not consciously thinking all this, as I stand at the foot of Trafalgar Street and look out northward over English Bay. I’m not even aware that these steps will drop me down onto the Point Grey Foreshore. Not until signage tells me so — and also points out that this rich intertidal zone is “one of the last natural beaches in Vancouver.”

A tree trunk marks the western end of a little footpath that will lead me eastward to Kitsilano Beach Park and the Seawall proper –the 23-km walking/cycling/jogging path that runs from Coal Harbour around Stanley Park and lines Burrard Inlet and False Creek all the way to Kits Beach.

Just a few minutes’ walk from that huge tree trunk, randomly placed by a storm, to very small icon, deliberately placed by human hands.

I am arrested by the sight. My mind jumps back some 50 years to another waterfront icon, this one on Lombok in Indonesia. A young man parked his scooter long enough to light joss sticks and offer a prayer.

I photographed him, and the image has (literally, metaphorically) stayed with me.

My mind jumps from that memory to another, the memory of a book i’ve had for many decades: Pathway Icons (The Wayside Art of India), by Priya Mookerjee. (Later, back home, I fill in the factoids: it was published by Thames and Hudson in 1987 and — to my delight — is still available via abebooks and others, and is even in the our library system.)

With all these associations in mind, I gently lift up the Point Grey icon long enough to look at it more closely…

and then carefully put it back. I recognize Ganesha, but not the other imagery. I’ll welcome any further information anyone can provide.

Are pathways not wonderful? From the physical, to remembered photos, to remembered books, and back to the physical…

Very physical, in fact!

I am now on the Seawall, in Kitsilano Beach Park, where I watch a fitness enthusiast take advantage of an empty stage to do his skip-rope routine.

Also physical: a swimmer.

Okay. Not a real, live swimmer out there in the water. We have all kinds of walkers, joggers and cyclists today, also some boaters, but nobody physically in the water.

Up in the wind, though? Ahh. That is another matter.

Up there we have Wind Swimmer.

She is a great story, for multiple reasons: Doug Taylor first created her to be a swimming companion for an old gentleman he met who regularly went swimming off Stanley Park. The sculpture was originally installed there, then smashed by a storm, rebuilt and moved to Kits, redesigned and rebuilt and reinstalled again. And still she swims!

And still I walk — my own path now leading me along the Seawall toward Burrard Bridge and beyond that Granville Bridge and all the busyness of Granville Island and its shops.

Where I enjoy a brie & feta feuilletée before rejoining my own pathway onward to home.

5 Comments
by icelandpenny on 16 November 2023  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 16 November 2023

https://icelandpenny.com/2023/11/16/pathways/

  • WALKING… & SEEING

    "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"

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