Category: Vancouver

why me why vancouver (from 2014)

Why me? Why Vancouver?

For almost ten years, my husband’s request to be transferred to Vancouver by his employer sat in some HR equivalent of development hell. Nothing happened, and given the desirability of the posting and Paul’s place in the line, nothing was expected to. Then, three weeks after our family followed his employment from Montréal to Toronto, he got word to report for work in Vancouver in 72 hours’ time.

And he smiled. He’d applied for three weeks of vacation at exactly the same time, and couldn’t be forced to start work until it was finished. Thus began our family’s transition.
We put everything we owned in a truck trailer – including the vintage motorcycle and sidecar that Paul later sold so we could buy a house – and sent it on its way. We grabbed the kids and the cat and flew to Victoria and dropped the kids off with the grandparents, and then we spent two weeks lining up a car, a place to live and schooling and drivers licences.

We laboured in that little golden slot of weather that we get sometimes in late October, when the days are deliciously crisp and cool, the air smells wonderful, and the sun on the mountains makes you think you’re living in a fantasy novel.

We wondered why there was a bird we could only hear at intersections. We said Gag-lard-ee and Anna-kiss and locals choked on polite laughter. We found a house (after consulting an earthquake map for the safest locales) and got the kids settled, and began a love affair with Vancouver that continues to this day.
I can’t speak for the rest of my family, since time has kept us in the same city but no longer under one roof, but the shape and texture and beauty of the city has come to mean home as no other place ever has. Memories bubble up.

The turbaned Sikhs teasing the waitress to bring them chopsticks in the Chinese restaurant, “What are we, uncivilized?” The silent explosion of flowering shrubs each spring, the lilacs, the rhodos and the cherries. The way people leave their Diwali lights up until Christmas. The Babel of accents and voices on the transit; the kindnesses I have experienced on the two occasions I’ve had car trouble and strangers appeared out of nowhere with cell phones. The ‘four o’clock stripe’ at sunset in the winter, just about the only time you can reliably see the sun. The hundreds of kilometres of lovely places to walk and ride; the hills that nearly gut you in the summer and cause articulated buses to splay out like drunks in the winter.

Watching my son do Winter Karate Training on Jericho Beach, marching in his gi into the water; paddling among the herons on the Pitt River, and then nearly dying of the effort required to get back to the dock when the tide was making. Sunsets and sunrises of transfixing beauty. Dealing with raccoons, skunks, coyotes, deer and bears, and once, the authorities had to tranquilize a cougar, mere blocks from the house. Running into herons in every part of the city. Once I startled one as I came around a corner on my bicycle and nearly fell off as a six food wingspan abruptly flung wide in front of me. The stairs at Wreck Beach and the 60’s vibe that greets you at the bottom. Sadness at the ancient trees wrecked by a storm in Stanley Park; joy to see the statue of Lord Stanley the first time and read the beautiful words inscribed on it. Asking Headwater to come play on the back deck for my brother’s birthday, and what an amazing concert that was.

There are things I’ve learned to dislike about Vancouver, but complaints are cheap. I’ve learned to love my splendid city, to want to know more about her and the people who were here before the settlers came. It was a happy accident that brought me here, and I’ll be staying here as long as I can. Vancouver has given me a church community I cherish, co-workers whom I now consider my closest friends, and music and love and really phenomenal craft beer in abundance.

It seems strange to have been born on one coast only to find my heart’s home on the other, but Vancouver is a place that has taught me to respect the playful grip coincidence has on any human life.

shit people shit policy

From today’s Sun “Internal emails at Vancouver city hall in the days leading up to April’s dismantling of the Downtown Eastside encampment show that officials knew there would not be enough beds to shelter people who were displaced.”

Let’s pile another notion onto this dreadful fact:  that thousands of more people will become unhoused in Vancouver – many of them children experiencing their first, and on the basis of statistics, not likely their last experience of having no stable shelter AND MORE PEOPLE KEEP MOVING HERE EVERY DAY … and tourist season is coming so there’s less housing stock because of the AirBnB units that have kicked out long term tenants.

many ripe swears

The PPC is just about the worst political party in Canada; Maxime Bernier is a racist POS, and I can only thank my neighbours that I have NOT HAD TO LOOK AT A SINGLE PPC CANDIDATE SIGN ANYWHERE IN BURNABY SINCE THE ELECTION STARTED.

FOR WHEN THE LINK DISAPPEARS:

Lisa Steacy September 15 2021 News 1130

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver People’s Party of Canada candidate has been distributing flyers comparing B.C.’s vaccine card to residential schools, and outraged Indigenous leaders are demanding accountability.

The flyer says it was “authorized by the official agent of Renate Siekmann,” who is running in Vancouver-Quadra— a riding that includes the Musqueam First Nation. The image of children outside of a residential school is overlaid with the text, “Discrimination is wrong: No vaccine passport.” In B.C., people need to show that they have received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in order to access non-essential businesses like restaurants, movie theatres, and gyms.

BC Assembly of First Nations (BCAFN) Regional Chief Terry Teegee says the comparison is deeply offensive, and trivializes the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada.

More China

Election influencing?  Oh, I imagine so.

 

Released Wednesday (note, Nanos Poll from August), it found two out of three Canadians want the government to be more forceful in its dealing with China, with 88 per cent saying they support or somewhat support a foreign agent registry for anyone working on behalf of a foreign government or organizations to influence Canadian policies, which is something the United States and Australia already have.

not much to report

Bih-bah project continues. Advent calendar of Christmas carol parodies continues (the time to work on Christmas stuff is February – I will post them during Advent this year, and some of them are quite funny, so I hope you enjoy them – I did We Three Kings and I saw Three Ships this morning.) I have written about 350 words on Best Roommate since last report. I am working on a song with no name, but it’s about Vancouver, and the land ack is built into it, so I’m happy with it, also it’s on the ukelele and I hadn’t composed anything on the uke in ages, so that was good. I’m particularly liking the accompaniment, it’s not exactly unique but it’s distinctive.
I am possibly working on some more kidney grit, so no black tea for me for a while, and I should probbly lay off the almonds, but that frenz is la super hard to do when your buddy heaves two kilos of organic Australian almonds (plump, unblemished, like a lifestyle ad) onto your front steps thank you TOM!
KAOSSILATOR NOTES GAte 49, S61, 90 bpm, turn the volume up all the way, 5ths, C_; hold left thumb in bottom left corner until the gate arpeggiator drops tick tick tick percussion like noises into the mix and then slide your right index finger slowly back and forth along the bottom. Occasionally deke upwards for an other worldly yipping noise. At the end let go for the fade. Gives a very atmospheric creeping through a darkened building/alley/tunnel feel.

Waiting for a CT scan to find out if I really do have brain damage and how bad it is…. YUMMY. Not recommended.

“G-d made me trans for the same reason he made grapes but not wine and wheat but not bread. So that man may participate in the act of creation” -some wise Jewish trans person whose name I don’t remember – @zfreinstatler on twitter this morning

Two Daves

Two letters written but not posted today; it’s a Two Dave day.

Jeff’s just asked me to go downstairs and watch a Time Team. Hope it’s something Saxon or Roman. L8r Nope, medieval and Tudor. But really interesting if you’re crazy about remodelling castles for successive waves of improvements in warfare, boom goes the gunpowder.

Alex was here recently and I’m just remembering him being happy about getting a tube shot on the Xenon game and it made me happy in consequence.

Buster was past damp into dripping wet, and filthy when he came back in this morning…. must be horrible to have to clean that crap off with your teeth and mouth blech.

Indian food delivered last night. I was very happy with the quality and quantity for the price. It’s a new place (8 months?)  that does pizza and Desi food Pasifika style, which is like, so Vancouver, it hurts.

Chuck Yeager, RIP. His autobiography is most entertaining.

Letter from Onty Mary, and I’m so glad she enjoyed the paper art I put in with a recent letter, that was cheering.

Today has been set aside for One Grim Task. I do not want this task. I do not want the cascade of tasks that will flow from this One Grim Task. I AM DISGUST, SON.

It’s 10:20 in the morning and I am still not nerved up for this gd task. I am actually hitting the old moral GPS for a recalc from my new position and fuck me if it’s not taking a bit longer than any reasonable person might expect. What is it that a reasonable person following Stoic principles might expect? I said I’d write first PHEW AN OUT, I HAVE AN OUT.

With that I must now turn my attention to the real writing I need to do today, otherwise known as Quarantine Porn. And that works whether I’m talking about the UPSUN universe or my rapidly-winding-down interest in writing porny Supernatural fanfic. (Not all of it’s porn, some of it’s just fluff.)

And if I’m not going to write that, I have to go back out into the kitchen and either work some more on The Dark Book – current section is “the Calendar” and it’s fucking MOLOCH this and MOLOCH that, as he drives his diesel dick through history and messes us all up, it’s just standard issue eschatology schlock, that’s part of the point of the poem though, disjointing the specifically English language over and past and through its various levels of inanity, legalism and perverse vagueness through to a new horrific understanding about what ‘end times’ actually means for the people living through it, and you are among those people, and what the hell is this poem anyway (this last aside for my parents, who have long since given up on trying to understand what it is I’m babbling about and reached this question much earlier) — or work on my master grocery list, and I finally figured how I can get what my grocery list looks like in my head to my actual grocery list that I use every week and reinforces how I visualize and operate in the world, but I haven’t done it yet. So I have work to do to advance this project, which will assist me cognitively as my brain declines and I’m still shopping, and which may have applications for other seniors and TBI sufferers. (I certainly wasn’t able to find anything like it on line.) So yeah, projects, in order, depending on what I’m up for mood and skill wize.

Yup, I’m going to wander off and reconfigure my reality right now, be back in a day for an update or sooner if something interesting happens.

One last thing, the ‘writing light’ in the kitchen died and I asked for help from Jeff  (my shoulder’s frozen…. that was weird, realizing it) and he touched the apparently dead compact fluorescent and it illuminated and it made me think of pOp. Also Jeff is quietly amazing, the best kind.

Good bad ugly

brO and I are waiting for MR2 to come back from the krankenhaus so we can do a proper shop.  We went for a walk this morning and I picked up some milk and cream so that if the car doesn’t come back today I don’t have to leave the house again,

which is fine,

cause I’ve already written 500 words today and I think today will be furtherly productive.  Kima’s first pregnancy chapter “Someday it’ll keep you” is maybe a couple of pages from done, and I’ve got a good start on Brendan’s first chapter “Check unheard messages” which is all about what happens when you let the Sixer version of nepotism determine who your collaborators are.

And the great thing about writing English goodest is bragging rights.

Ayuh.  All I know is that when I think of the ideas I want to introduce and the hearts I want to break  MUAH HAH HAHHHH! choke gargle.

Fuel oil spill at English Bay.  I’m sickened by it.  The province says “It’s a federal matter” and the feds have killed all the funds for boats for oil spills.  Harper won’t be visiting I’m sure and the boat responsible can’t even be pinned down and fined f’chrissakes.

The grown child of a friend of mine (and a facebook friend) was metres away (indoors thanks be) from the police incident at 5 last afternoon.  Perp got all stabby with two dudes rendered more topologically complex and one woman clinging to life as of this morning; and when bean bag shot didn’t slow him down they gave him summary justice, lead punctuation edition. Vancouver seems to be abloom with police shootings. IA is all over it.

1.3 hours.

ALRIGHTY THEN BREAK TIME IS OVER.

 

Back from the Partay

Jeff and I are just back from collecting the Mr. Two from Dundas Street, where it was parked overnight after we hung out at Jim’s party.  Keith came along as well.  A substantial chunk of Jim’s old band was there and they backed me up on Buy Me A Beer, which I managed to get through quite creditably considering how impaired I was, and playing it on the ‘wrong’ instrument, being Jim’s acoustic guitar.  Jim also got me singing An Evening of Serious Drinking.  Oh, those hot wings!  and Otto-man was there, big hugs.  First reunion of the Lunch Bunch in about five years.  We’ve had three out of four multiple times, but not four out of four…. Being me, Mike, Tom U and Jerome.

Anyway, it was a fabulous time and Mike drove me, Jerome and Brian C. home as he had spent several hours only drinking pop prior to going home.   Now brunch and then I’m taking Keith to MEC to go parkour shoe shopping.  Grosses Bises everybody!!!

busy morning

Off to the clinic for an early appointment, (Jeff gave me a lift) and then I went completely berserk.  Wandered into a cooking supply place, got a bunch of kitchen gadgets I actually needed, and a bunch I don’t but had to have.  Bought a new handbag (basically a black shopping bag with zippers, just barely big enough to hold my laptop).  Bought two stems of white freesia.  Walked from Cambie and Broadway to Kingsway and Broadway.  On the way poked my head into the Luddite’s place of work and got off the perfect line… the Luddite’s boss said, “For me?” when he saw the flowers and I just grinned and said, “No, for him!”  which amused the Luddite no end. He’s much the same as always, except more so.  Of course he wouldn’t take the flowers from me so I got to be a smart ass to his boss AND keep the flowers.  Then I wandered into a mattress store and after telling the guy to wake me in an hour after finding the perfect mattress, purchased two single mattresses with covers, to be delivered next Saturday. That’s so Keith has a proper bed when he sleeps over.  Also, as much as I like the Fjord Queen bed it’s too damned big for my little bedroom, so I’m going to go back to sleeping on the floor.  I have a week to reorganize things so when the mattresses show up I have places to put them.  With that done I walked to the next bus stop and went home, many hundreds of dollars poorer.   But I can julienne things, and I have proper garlic technology, and I found out where to buy a cast iron grill for the oven, and I got two cute little egg poachers and promptly used them to make our lunch (Jeff declared himself contented), and I can now properly clean tea and coffeepots, and I got to listen to the chef in the back (there are cooking classes at the back of the store) shriek and giggle in a most entertaining way. I also got to listen to an openly gay man tell the gal at the counter that the store was worse than crack, and I was in no position to debate the point….

Now:

I assault the bathroom and remove scum and squick;

I do some on line banking to backstop my purchases;

I run some laundry;

I do some mending;

I fix my little green hat so it sits on my head properly;

I review the list of things to do that I made while waiting for the very sweet woman who saw me at a clinic (never get two perimenopausal women in the same room discussing the joys thereof, it’s wonderful for us but murder on the appointment schedule).

It has to be spring.  I got my mo back.

Big dog

Samantha is a mastiff cross, and small, dainty and elegant do not describe her. What she is, is big, although as we slogged through the rain and mud at Trout Lake yesterday there were bigger dogs yet at the offleash part of the park.  My companion was amazed that there could be an offleash park where there were nesting birds, and I asked, somewhat rhetorically, if he’d ever been to Trout Lake in the summer time, when it is a warm green hymn to avian fecal material. Given that human beings also swim there (I have seen it, although you wouldn’t catch me in there unless the person next to me was encouraging me with a semi automatic) I don’t imagine the city fathers care if a few birds get harassed.  The fewer nesting there the better, and none of them are exactly what I would call endangered species.

While we were there, the tree next to the parking lot was full of birds, all singing as loud as they could simultaneously.  The light was crappy, but it sure sounded like starlings and red winged blackbirds having a smackdown.  It was so loud that I just stood gaping in the rain.

Samantha got in the water and got very dirty.

When my companion came to pick me up, we attempted a greeting kiss. We both ended up kissing Samantha’s nose.  I can’t remember laughing that hard in quite a while.  After the park we went to Burnaby Palace (Jeff got the leftovers, so apart from waffles on Saturday morning I dodged cooking every meal this weekend), and had a lovely time.

Church was great yesterday morning, Marci Green did the service, which was about the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign.

Relief at last

I lost my bank card about three weeks ago but only called the bank to replace it a week ago, and it turned up yesterday.  Without a bank card I couldn’t pay bills on line which was bad, or spend much money, which was good.  I think I will start leaving it at home unless I have a planned cash expenditure that day.  I run a tab at the cafeteria at work and only pay it off twice a month.

I light a candle for Zari at work; her mum died back in Iran and she couldn’t go to the funeral, and she’s been feeling really blue ever since.  Then she said something that made me really sad; she said that even with everything that is so bad about back home, she’d be retired by now if she lived in Iran.  I will be working until I am sixty-five, so I know how she feels…

After sober consideration, Jeff responded to the twit next door who told him in a note on his windshield to quit parking in his space.  There is no assigned parking on this street.  To think I cut a hole in the snowbank so the neighbour could have access to his car, during the last snowstorm!  To think he has SIX PLACES TO PARK, two in his garage, two in his paved over yard, and two in front of his house!  Anyway, Jeff’s letter was a masterpiece; too bad it won’t help do anything except vent Jeff’s spleen.

I forgot to mention that when I left Mike’s place on Monday night a skunk greeted me.  I walked out into the road and said what I always say when I get too close to a critter; “Evening, brother skunk,” as I have heard that if you project civility animals are less likely to attack you.  Skunks sure have an odd gait.

Every night at 5:45, about three to four thousand crows gather around the Keg on Willingdon.  The sky is sometimes black with them.  I am going to try to get pictures tonight.

I hope everybody has a simply splendid day, and a nice weekend.