Vancouver
They did it. They finally jacked up the price of the 7-11 five cent candies.
I was on the 7-11-less East Coast when they did, but I’d heard the news. Still, I texted this photo to a couple friends who share (or have shared) my love of 7-11 candies with captions like, “What the hell happened?”
My one friend is still heavily involved in candy consumption. He says there will be no more 7-11 candy until at least eight years down the road when he estimates inflation will catch up and they will again seem like a good deal.
My other friend decided several years ago that sugar and food colouring pressed into fun shapes isn’t best for your health. He told me the price increase was a direct result of my leaving B.C. and sending the province’s candy economy into a deep recession.
I spent a lot of time at the waterfront while I was in Vancouver. Even in the middle of winter there were still lots of people from all over the world walking the seawall. At first I explained the high number of foreigners as members of visiting sports teams, or people in the city on business. But then there were so many that they couldn’t all fit into those categories.
I realized a lot of the people were just visiting Vancouver as your average tourist. I didn’t think this happened there in the winter. It definitely doesn’t in Halifax where there is a clear tourist season that justifiably shuts down when winter comes. But Vancouver, I guess, has the status of a city that transcends weather, there’s enough going on that it’s worth a visit any time of the year. Part of the reason I took this picture of Douglas Coupland’s digital orca statue is because it was a rare quiet moment on the waterfront.
Spotted at a Blenz coffee on Broadway, this is an advertisement for a yoga retreat on Haida Gwaii. My family has often speculated on whether Haida Gwaii could ever be a tourist draw anywhere near as popular as places like Vancouver Island.
There are two lines of argument. The “no” side says that between long drives, long boat rides and infrequent flights, it’s just too hard to access. The “yes” side says that as the population of B.C. and the world continues to grow, people will only look farther and farther away to find a quiet, wild place to live. It appears the “yes” side is winning, thanks to the reasons above as well as a combination of A) Haida enterprise — underestimate their business savvy at your peril and, B) the growing cohort of rootsy living fetishists looking for wild new places to visit or settle.
Full disclosure: I did my own yuppie pilgrimage to HG this past winter. Guilty as charged.
Fuller disclosure: my family logs there, neutralizing above pilgrimage.
Toronto
I like Toronto, but something about it doesn't sit right. I have a little pilot light of disdain towards this city that I can’t quite extinguish.
Nowhere was this more obvious than when I walked by Massey Hall for the first time. It brought about choppy feelings of awe and auuugh.
Here’s what I know about Massey Hall: It’s the most famous arts venue in the country, Neil Young has played here and you’ve made it as a Canadian artist if you’ve played Massey Hall.
But it also represents the arts branch of Ontario supremacy, a nice little historic space for our country’s great (mostly Ontarian) artists to come and play in an intimate setting for old Toronto residents from neighbouhoods like York and the Annex and whatever.
I honestly have no idea what engendered these dismissive feelings, I wasn’t even alive when P.E. Trudeau flipped off those protestors in Vancouver and my family rarely talked about the supposed shortchanging of the West. Stranger still, I’ve run into the same sentiment on the East Coast, yet somehow I feel my Western Alienation is superior to their Eastern Alienation. It’s beyond irrational.
Anyway, there I was outside Massey Hall. On the marquee there was an ad for an upcoming Blue Rodeo concert. Perfect, I thought, beloved mediocre Ontario band plays best venue in smug cultural capital.
The great antidote to my ballooning thoughts on alienation and the insular Canadian arts scene came with this blunt message.
Jessica Pare, beautiful Mad Men actress from Montreal, ex-presenter at the Giller prize ceremony, patron of the Canadian arts, wife of the guy who manages Men Without Hats, cut down, for no reason, on the side of a glass bus shelter.
The magnificent CN Tower.
San Francisco
A note on the San Francisco climate. This is the way our group dressed while we were there, light coats and often just a t-shirt. But we were coming from the north. If you look in the background of this photo you’ll see a woman wearing a thick puffy coat. More than likely she’s coming from the south. Depending on where you come from, San Francisco is either a break from the cold weather or a trip to the cold weather. Nowhere in the world is there less consensus on appropriate dress for the weather than there is among the tourists in San Francisco.
Still, we were pumped for this game, my sister bought the tickets months ago for $190 each, the week before the game they were selling for $550. We were seeing the academic Spurs play against the current best player in the world, Stephen Curry.
The game was a two act show.
Act I: Curry comes out and scores 19 rat-ball inspired points in one quarter, pouring sugar in the Spurs’ gas tank.
Intermission: Curry sits for most of the second quarter.
Act II: In the Third quarter with the Spurs trailing by 15 but narrowing the gap to 10, Curry reappears to score another 18 points, putting the Spurs in a 30 point hole from which there is no recovery.
In 28 minutes Steph scores 37 points and hits six of nine from beyond the arc. Stephen Curry has no equal and the disappointment of a blowout game was cancelled by his performance.
The fabulous Golden Gate Bridge
Finally, here are a few shoddy clips I filmed of Ben Reinbolt, two time elementary jazz band award winner and one of Terrace B.C.’s top skaters, at a park in San Francisco.