Throughout most parts of Canada, the first Monday in August is a civic holiday. The different provinces and territories have different names for it. Manitoba, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories simply call it “Civic Holiday”; Alberta refers to it as “Alberta Heritage Day”; Ontario names it “Simcoe Day” after an an early governor of the province; while Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, like British Columbia, add the word “Day” to the name of the province to create the name of the holiday. Since summer is all too short in this northern country, I think that the August holiday really celebrates the sunny days which will soon fade as winter approaches. Canadians seem to understand this and they spend the day on beach or the backyard enjoying the warmth while they have it.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans” and when in Canada, do as the Canadians. We too spent the day outside, doing not that much, but enjoying a warm, lazy summer day. We figured that Granville Island would be a good place to do that. Earlier on this trip when we went to Granville Island to go to the market there, we drove over and spent a good deal of time trying to find a parking space. We figured it would be even harder today to find a parking space on the island so we decided to take one of ferry boats instead. We caught the ferry right at the foot of the Burrard Bridge.
One of the great features of these ferries is that they take dogs, even large ones like ours, for free. And, as usual, the dogs sparked conversations with our fellow passengers, people who otherwise probably might not have spoken to us. There are some difficult moments when traveling with animals, but they help you meet other travelers and the residents.
John had seen an advertisement for a free, outside youth production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. We picked some seats far to the side so the dogs would not annoy anyone in the audience. That made it a little hard to hear at times. The director had made some interesting choices. This production was the culminating project of a summer Shakespeare program, and not surprisingly there were probably more girls than boys in the class. Julius Caesar, however, has few roles for women, and even those that are in the play, like Calpurnia or Brutus’s wife, have relatively few lines. So the director chose to change some of the characters like Cassius and Mark Antony into women. That is Cassius in the red dress below.
This worked better than you might have expected, and was the most interesting part of this student production. More predictable, and less interesting, was the decision to set it in the 1930’s. Snippets from the Godfather soundtrack played in the background, though some of the costume choices suggested fascist Italy more than gangland New York.
The dogs were a little restless, so we did not stay for the second act. Instead, we walked over to the market area where one of the local opera companies was doing a concert. Two singers, one soprano and the baritone below, did some of the more famous arias from various operas with a keyboard accompaniment. They were quite good, and we had some lunch listening to them sing.
We took the ferry back to town. The ferry stop in West End is right next to one of Vancouver’s dog beaches. So we rewarded the dogs for their patience during Shakespeare with some off-leash time in the water.
Back at the apartment, the canines had kibble and the humans had sandwiches. In the evening, we went to a local theater to see Stupid, Crazy Love. We were entertained, but neither of us thought it a particularly memorable movie.
Tomorrow, the dogs leave for camp.
