Exploring Vancouver, British Columbia

Canada is an amazingly beautiful country, one I’d like to see a lot more of. Fishing season is still a little over a month away, with the first fishery being a late-start winter blackmouth.In the meantime, I’m taking care of any needed maintenance items and upgrades, and spending some quality time with my wife. She had never been to Canada before, so we took advantage of the President’s Day long weekend to go to Vancouver. 

Although there was no snow left anymore in Everett, there was still plenty on the ground from Bellingham north. The snow made it feel like a real Canadian experience. Although it was the border crossing with the longest wait, I decided to take Viktoria to the Peace Arch crossing at Blaine, just so she could see it. The beautiful arch is a symbol of unity between Canada and the US, which bears inscriptions such as “Children of a Common Mother”, “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity”, and “May These Gates Never Be Closed”. These inscriptions are particularly poignant in this awkward time. We passed the wait time by playfully blaming each other for choosing the slow lane, and watching a seagull who went from car roof to car roof, spending a couple of minutes on each one. We joked that it was one of the new drug-sniffing gulls employed by Customs. 

Just on the other side of the border was a place I had visited many times to exchange money, but now appears to be permanently closed. Speaking of exchanging money, the exchange rate is the most uneven I’ve ever seen in my life: 1.41 Canadian dollars to one US dollar. It was a good time for us to visit. The stop gave me the chance to switch my car’s electronic speedometer over to metric units. 

Since it was too early to check in to our hotel, we went directly to the Vancouver Aquarium in beautiful Stanley Park. The first time I went there in the 1980s, they had a very entertaining orca show. This aquarium was actually the second in the world to capture a wild orca and run shows with it. However, this practice has long since fallen out of favor and is no longer considered humane. The last time I went maybe 10-15 years ago they still had a beluga which was equally entertaining, but now it’s gone too. Now the big old tank is divided up into many smaller tanks, where they keep various seals and sea lions. When their orcas died and they were not allowed to replace them, they initially feared that they would fail to attract enough visitors. Nowadays, you would never guess any of those concerns had ever existed. In fact, it was so insanely crowded that it kind of detracted from the experience. Despite the cold and snow, it seemed that everybody in Vancouver had come that day. Nevertheless, it was entertaining to see the Amazon Rain Forest area, which is like a greenhouse full of birds, snakes, poisonous frogs, and other interesting creatures. Other areas highlight the BC coast, the Canadian arctic, and a beautiful display with hundreds of jellies. 

Driving through downtown to our hotel, we were struck by what a well-planned and liveable city Vancouver is compared to Seattle. The City of Vancouver started planning for growth a long time ago, and modeled the downtown after Hong Kong, with taller, thinner buildings with space in between. This airy feel contrasts with the darker, gloomier feel of Seattle, where imposing buildings occupy every inch of their footprint. Our hotel was a case in point: it had just ten floors per room, but was 30 stories tall. Our room on the 19th floor had an amazing view, and was reasonably priced. It was essentially a one-bedroom apartment, complete with a full kitchen and separate living room. After we checked in, we only had to walk two blocks to the nearest urban grocery store, where we spent a lot of time taking in all the interesting things on offer there. We were told we couldn’t buy liquor in grocery stores in Canada, but we only had to go across the street to a beautiful little wine shop, where a man helped us pick out something nice. It felt like a very European experience in North America. 

The next morning we drove to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, and got there right after they opened. “Museum of Anthropology” sounds boring, but it was actually the high point of our trip. This facility is a temple of Coast Salish art and culture, presented in an absolutely gorgeous setting. There is a huge elegant great hall with glass walls, which displays full-height totem poles indoors, along with canoes and other large items. One area has countless frightening masks and other artifacts, many of which are contained in hundreds of unlabeled drawers which you can open to see what surprises are within. The Bill Reid Rotunda contains one of the most important works by one of Canada’s most famous and influential native artists, the Raven and the First Men statue. While we were admiring everything, an unexpected performance by a native dance troupe began. They marched chanting and drumming from the front lobby into the great hall. After a couple of dances and some interpretive explanations, they began another dance and invited the audience to participate. My normally-reserved wife jumped at the chance, and soon both she and I were both dancing the raven, the killer whale, the eagle, and the wolf. It was a great experience, and one we’ll never forget. 

From there we parked at our hotel but didn’t go back up to our room. We walked about a kilometer down to False Creek, where we took a cute, colorful little passenger ferry over to Granville Island, so that we could explore the famous public market. We were struck by the fact that the skipper appeared to be a teenage girl barely old enough to drive a car. In all the times I’d been to Vancouver, I had never been to the market. It was a lot like the Pike Place Market in Seattle, except not as historic nor as chaotically designed. It was a lively place full of countless food vendors, hawking everything from Vegemite to Nanaimo bars. We wanted to try everything! For lunch, we finally settled on schnitzel and pierogi from a German food vendor, and we bought some Nanaimo bars for the road. 

We took the ferry back back across False Creek with our leftover lunch stuffed in a backpack, and walked most of the way across downtown to the Skytrain station near Canada Place. Oddly enough, this part of the Skytrain is actually underground like a traditional urban metro system. We traveled one stop to the end of the line, where we could walk to the Seabus station. The Seabus is a passenger ferry that emulates a big subway car, at least from the inside, and runs at regular and frequent intervals. The station also resembled a subway station, except that you actually board a boat instead of a train. The 15-minute trip crosses Burrard Inlet to North Vancouver, and stops adjacent to a shopping area called Longsdale Quay. It’s kind of a cross between a public market and a small, multistory shopping mall. Although a lot of stores on the upper floor were vacant, the first floor was full of interesting food vendors like we had seen at Granville Island. We chatted with some of the vendors, and I bought my wife a bright red beret which looks very cute on her. After crossing back to Downtown Vancouver, we walked a short distance from the Seabus terminal to a historic neighborhood known as Gastown, to see the famous steam-powered clock. A cloud of steam floats off the clock at all times of day and night, and at 15-minute intervals various musical whistles blow, with the top of the hour being most dramatic. While waiting for the steam whistles to go off, we perused touristy stores which sold trinkets like little stuffed moose dressed like Canadian Mounties, and anything imaginable made of maple syrup. The clock is the quintessential steampunk icon, and a uniquely Vancouver attraction. This and most of the handful of other steam clocks in the world were designed by Canadian horologist Raymond Saunders. Although it looks like a Victorian-era timepiece, it was actually built in 1977. 

By the time we got back to the hotel, it had been a long and busy day. The next morning we packed up and headed south. Before crossing, we decided to stop at White Rock, BC, which is just north of Blaine, Washington. It’s a cute beach resort town, famous for the longest pier in Canada. Originally built in 1912 and extended several times, the pier is now more than 1500 feet long. The sun had come out, and we enjoyed a leisurely stroll to the end of it and back. We noted on the way that the Peace Arch border crossing had nearly a two-hour wait, so we opted to head east. We drove for more than half an hour along the oddly-named “0th Avenue”. We understood how it got its name; it literally ran along the US border. There were no roads turning to the right, only to the left. Every kilometer or so, we saw little concrete monoliths marking the border, just a meter off the road. There were almost no houses along the right side of the road, and when we occasionally saw one we knew that the house was actually on the American side, and only its backyard touched the border. We eventually got to the Lynden crossing, which had only a 15-minute wait. The Customs officer we talked to was friendly and quick, though he made us throw away the grapes we had bought. 

Since it was not even lunchtime yet, we decided on an ambitious plan. I had always wanted to take Viktoria up to Mount Baker in winter so that she could see the snowy mountains. Since we were only a little more than an hour from the ski area, we decided that it was the right time. As we got past Maple Falls, we started to see snow by the side of the road again. I planned a stop at beautiful Nooksack Falls, which I don’t think I’ve been to in 20 years. As soon as I turned off the highway, I started to regret my plan. Though the highway was totally clear of snow, the steep road down to the falls hadn’t been plowed, salted, or sanded, and it was very slippery and treacherous. Because I didn’t have a good place to turn around, I just dropped into first gear and Snow Mode, and crawled down the hill at a snail’s pace. When we got to the parking lot less than a mile later, we got out and put our coats on. We could hear the sound of the nearby falls. The trail down to it was short but quite steep though. It was so icy that I could barely remain upright on level ground. We decided that it was just too dangerous to continue. We didn’t feel like sliding over a waterfall, or even falling on the hard ground, on that particular day. 

We somehow made it back to the highway and soon found ourselves in a foggy cloud as we ascended the mountain. We hoped we’d come out on top, but we never quite did. At the ski area, we could only barely make out skiers going up the lifts and down the mountains, but we missed out on the beautiful mountains I had hoped to show Viktoria. We settled for overpriced burgers at the lodge, to the sound of a local garage band playing CCR covers. We decided to take all the backroads home, mostly along Highway 9. It was a good evening for it, because we encountered many stunningly beautiful, highly localized fog patches as we passed between villages along the road. We got home just after sunset. After having to mostly scrap our winter vacation because of my back, it was good to get out and have a successful long weekend to Vancouver. We both agreed to go to Victoria this spring to see Butchart Gardens.