1 January 2026 – Well, it is forward, isn’t it, when the reverse of your usual choice offers a new way to look at things. It’s hardly a major life breakthrough, but it does qualify as a pleasing little experiment, and worthy of the first day of a new year.

My “little experiment” is to walk the Burrard Inlet Seawall east-to-west between Waterfront Station and Stanley Park, instead of west-to-east. I know: small stuff indeed. But the fog is burning off, and it isn’t raining, and the temperature is comfortably above zero. Good reasons to drop off a bus at Waterfront Station, and get myself down to the water by Canada Place.

Tourists and locals stroll; the sights present themselves for admiration:

the fabric roof “sails” of Canada Place, the rental bicycles, a SeaBus completing its run from North Vancouver, a laden freighter and, of course, the orange cranes that tend to the freighters.

After that, my eye seems to focus more on slivers of scenes, not the whole panorama.

The tip of The Drop, the 2008 sculpture in Bon Voyage Plaza by the German four-artist collective Inges Idee that honours our temperate rainforest status with one elegant raindrop…

Doug Taylor’s kinetic weathervane Wind Wheel Mobile just west of the Convention Centre, which, from this angle, resembles a bobbing duck more than a weathervane…

Seawall bike lanes bordering the west side of Harbour Green Park, under a russet canopy of (I think!) winter beech leaves…

and the merest ghost of the sun, glimmering through the fog between buildings at the top of a Coal Harbour Park staircase.

I spend a moment with Santa’s floating gift “To YOU” in the Coal Harbour marinas.

Really a lavish Christmas present? Or, wait a minute, a clever-boots For Sale sign? The suspiciously generic label bears the M&P Yacht Centre logo, after all.

Far (west) end of the marinas, and I pause again, this time for something I feel no need to interpret.

A red cube sticker + a vee of water. I just like it.

Then the brass curve of the Coal Harbour Fellowship Bell (commemorating the companies and people of the “self-contained industrial marine community” that, 1891-1979, populated this area)…

and then more red, and another curve. This time red bobbing in the water, not fixed above it, and in a sinuous horizontal arc, not vertical.

A bit more hoofing along, and, finally, I am here.

I am exactly where the map says I am: on the Seawall at the east end of Devonian Harbour Park, in turn a gateway to Stanley Park, and also the end of my route from Waterfront Station, down there in blue/white signage at the bottom of the map.

Time for me to follow the snake fence through the park…

pause to take group pictures for some happy tourists, then….

cross this little bridge, and angle up along the creek to those cranes and new-builds on West Georgia.

Where I hop on a trusty #19, and ride my way home.

(Happy New Year, everyone! I so appreciate your interest and generous good humour.)