We all slept in late this morning, including the dogs. I am usually up by five in the morning, but this morning when I turned over and looked at the clock it read 8:45. I tossed some clothes on and took the animals out to do what they needed to do. John slept for about 45 minutes more.
We had read about a community pancake breakfast, a fundraiser for Vancouver Pride. It sounded like fun, so we went down to Davie Street to have something to eat. The pancakes and sausage were great, and since the recommended donation was only 2 dollars, it was just as easy on the budget as it was delicious to the taste. We sat at long tables, and we chatted with some of the people seated with us as well as a couple of women from from Calgary who stopped by to ask us about the dogs.
After breakfast, John surprised me when he said that he wanted to do the walk around Stanley Park that the dogs and I had made yesterday. So we walked back to the hotel to pick up our doggie canteen and to pick up a couple other things, and then we strolled down Barclay Street and Denman Street to the entrance of the park. Unlike the cloudy morning we had yesterday, today was warm and brilliantly sunny.
Unlike yesterday, when my goal was to complete my circuit around the park as fast as possible, we took the walk at a leisurely pace and stopped to look at everything interesting. We also stopped while Miss Edie smelled everything interesting! Of little interest to the dogs were of couple of cricket matches being played. My first thought was, “Oh, so British!” but when we looked closer we discovered that almost all the players were Indian or Pakistani.
So were most of the fans who were watching from the shade of nearby trees.
Near the Indians playing cricket, were the Totem Poles, reminders that the other Indians, the people Canadians now call “First Nations” once made this place their home. Most of the native peoples were driven from their villages when various lumber companies cut down the trees in the area and when the Royal Navy decided to make this area its headquarters. A few Squamish people remained here after the establishment of the park, but they were finally convinced to sell their homes. The government burned the last authentic remains of native culture, and then erected these totem poles to honor the people whose lives they had destroyed.
On the seawall there is also a replica of the masthead of the RMS Empress of Japan. Despite the name and the dragon motif, there is nothing authentically Asian about this. The Empress of Japan was a ship built in England in 1890 for the Canadian Pacific Railroad designed to carry passengers and mail between western Canada and Hong Kong. Since this way the era in which the English had just given Victoria the title of “Empress of India,” I wonder if the British in their imperial lunacy had decided it was only time before they made Japan part of their empire, too? The dogs did not seem to find the fiberglass replica either historic or interesting.
A little further down the path is a statue called simply Girl in a Wetsuit. It’s a completely unremarkable piece of public art from the 1970’s. The best part of it was that it seemed to make tourists who passed by pose for pictures.
Around this time, the dogs were getting pretty hot and John decided to cool them off. There were signs everywhere warning that dogs were not allowed on the beach subject to a 2.000 dollar fine. But we have both noticed that while there are lots of laws and regulations in Vancouver, there seems to be little effort to enforce them. So we found a rocky spot where nobody was around and he doused them with some cool sea water. They seemed to like that.
We soon came upon Siwash Rock, another Stanley Park landmark. There is a plaque here commemorating some young man who dove from the top of the rock to his death below because he did not notice it was low tide. I suspect the problem was more likely inebriation than a failure to consult the tide tables.
After the rock, we came to Third Beach. This is the largest and sandiest of the the three beaches in the park and it was packed with people on this warm day. The beach was also loaded with signs telling you what you should and should not do. You should wear a hat. You should wear sunscreen with a high SPF. You may not drink alcohol. You may not have inflatables. You may not smoke. Looking at the crowd assembled, the most whites I had ever seen in any spot in Vancouver, I observed few hats. I smelled a lot of sunscreen, though I could not tell if it was high SPF or not. I saw a number of people drinking beer. I saw several inflatables. And there were, pretty typical for Vancouver, lots of people smoking. I am not exactly sure of what value there is in passing regulations that you have no intention of enforcing.
After Third Beach, which directly faces the Strait of George, the path veers east and now you face English Bay. After a short walk, we came to Second Beach. There is a huge pool here, and it seems to be the most popular spot for families. It was also much more multicultural than Third Beach, and I observed lots of Asians and Eastern Europeans here. The Poles and Russians have an interesting beach look as you can see in the picture below.
On our way back, we found a young man who was selling lemonade to help raise money for tsunami relief.
Back at the apartment, John made a nice supper of us from our Granville Public Market purchases. The salami was particularly delicious.
Every year since 1990 there has been an international fireworks competition in Vancouver. Now called the Celebration of Light, three countries stage elaborate fireworks shows set to music which is broadcast by a local radio station. John and I had seen one of the first of these the first time we came to Vancouver for a brief visit in the early 1990’s. One of the reasons for picking this week to come to British Columbia was so we could see this again.
Vancouver is still recovering from the riots that followed the Stanley Cup game earlier this year. Now by Los Angeles standards, this was hardly a riot. One person died, a few cars were burned, and a bunch of shop windows were smashed. Seems like a pretty ordinary day in South LA. But the locals here were horrified by what they saw as a descent into Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so the police presence was pretty strong even if they did not seem to be really doing anything. John snapped this artsy shot as we watched people stroll down Davie Street.
Tonight’s show was presented by China, and with such a large Chinese population here, it seemed like they had almost a hometown advantage in the competition. The music was pretty uninteresting – it sounded for the most part like a bad film score – but the pyrotechnics are amazing.
As we came home, it began to rain. How perfect that they rain waited until the fireworks were over.
