Throughout the lengthy cherry blossoms season, I’ve roamed around the Greater Vancouver seeking the best blooming areas and the most flower covered trees. I explored Kitsilano all the way to UBC, visited the Queen Elizabeth Park, surveyed the Northern end of Commercial Drive. These were all very nice (see the previous post for proof.)

But I should have known better. As often in Vancouver, the best was to be found right in the heart of downtown. There, in the middle of an urban sea ursin of high rises, nested against the Burrard SkyTrain station, is the most magnificent cherry blossom display of them all. The air smells of flowers and pedestrians can’t help but to stare and smile as they catch a glimpse of the snowcapped mountains framed between high towers of tinted glass and a foreground of blooming trees.

There’s Vancouver in a nutshell. Flowers and concrete, sunshine and rain, fire and ice.

« Like the most vivid of dreams, the city is reinventing itself: something curious, perhaps miraculous is happening here. »

[Lance Berelowitz - Dream City]

It was Sunday night, the 26th of March. I could barely believe it, but after pinching myself twice I had to accept the puzzling fact that I was sitting on the mezzanine of Vancouver’s premiere venue, eagerly awaiting the start of the night’s event: the last North American show of the Sisters of Mercy’s 2006 Silver Bullet tour!

I took a sip of my Honey Lager and looked down at the main floor below me. The Commodore Ballroom is located on Granville Street in the heart of the entertainment district and I could see lots of people rushing by in the rain through the windows. It’s a busy area and the line-up at the door had, as usual, been reaching Smithe’s corner; but once inside, the place was pleasant and did not feel overcrowded. A mixed and very well behaved crowd wandered by and most of the side tables were already occupied...

One has to be of a certain generation to have witnessed the 80’s alternative movement, I thought, and that was clearly reflected by the public’s average age. Of course a lot of black was still being worn as well as black make-up and hair, yet none of the very fancy goth fashion I had expected. Maybe Vancouver isn’t that extreme in its musical tastes after all.

I spent some time reflecting on the obvious fact that I’ve never been much of a concert person myself and do not think so highly of the « fan » behavior. The last live show I attended was in the late 80’s when I saw Pink Floyd at the Montreal Olympic Stadium. But the Commodore can hardly be compared to a stadium. It looks and feels like a theatre and its design makes for a very intimate setting. With a maximum capacity of 900 persons, it is definitely a small audience, play and have fun place and I suppose the bands must like it for that reason.

The place filled up slowly and finally the guest singer started playing, but I have to say he didn’t impress me at all. The sound wasn’t very good and people pretty much ignored him and talked, except for the few hardcore fans pressed against the stage and who weren’t going to be distracted away from the place where their idols eventually would show up.

And then at last, after much waiting, the lights were dimmed once more, smoke hissed on the stage, the spotlights wildly came to life and Doktor Avalanche started playing his typical electric beat. The crowd roared, instinctively moving forward. And then appearing through the smoke like ghosts, they were there. The Sisters of Mercy.

Continue reading "The Sisters of Mercy at the Commodore"

The ride there was fun despite a slight detour into the - very - hilly residential area of West Van’. The PDF cycling routes map showed a designated route leading north into the quiet neighborhoods of Bayridge and Cypress Park instead of following the busy Marine Dr., so I went for it. Only too late did I remember that West Vancouver is built on a mountain side, or as we say « à flanc de montagne ».

I eventually climbed up to and passed under the Upper Levels Highway (Highway 1), and then was completely stunned when my bike route actually merged with it. Only in Vancouver can someone on a mountain bike share a limited access highway with cars passing by at the 90 km/h speed limit! A little scary, but lots of fun on the downhill sections!

And then my chain decided to act up and about the time I reached the Eagle Harbor marina, my patience had vanished along with most of my energy. So for the ride home, I wimped out and took advantage of Coast Mountain buses’ convenient bicycle racks...

[Vancouver and Stanley Park seen from the Lions Gate Bridge]

A new star is born

« If there are drawbacks to blogging, I’ll discover them as I go. My grand-mother published poetry. My mother wrote a book. My brother wrote a book. For all I know, my cat is recording his memoires. I feel the pressure. I’ll write a blog. »

[From On Blogging, Away from the Ocean - My dear sister’s new blog!]

Very cool to have you online, Gitte. Now we can talk from geek to geek

On March 22nd, around 12:30 am, the 125 meters long B.C. Ferries ship Queen of the North apparently ran aground and sank in less than an hour, 130 km south of Prince Ruppert. 99 passengers and crew were rescued, two are missing.

If the two missing passengers are actually lost, this is a tragedy and my heart goes to their friends and family. I’m still hoping that there was an error in the manifests or that they managed to get rescued by a third party and just didn’t report in.

This being said, I have to voice out my disgust at the media’s reaction to this, as in so many other situations. They act like vultures feeding on dead meat, except that most of the time, they don’t wait for the prey to be dead and start feeding before the story has come to an end…

Ships will sink, planes will crash, trains will collide. It’s unavoidable. It is due to the combination of human characteristics and mechanical laws. Failure is bound to happen at some point. If you use or get involved in those means of transportation, you are silently acknowledging that fact. But these means of transportation are still much safer than our daily activities of smoking and driving our cars. Yet we fail to point our fingers at those real murderers, maybe because the medias don’t either.

So when something goes wrong, why are we so prompt to look for someone else to blame? Maybe it’s time we took our responsabilities and accepted to be in charge of our own lives, including what goes wrong in there. Sometimes, no one is to blame. Shit just happens.

As far as I know, as of yesterday, no one was complaining about the B.C. Ferries fleet safety record. The tourism industry uses them happily, so does the local population. Yet, today the newspapers (I won’t quote names not to make enemies unnecessarily) were having a feast on B.C. Ferries’ back. One of them had a special column on page 5 (fifth page in a row to deal exclusively with the sinking) of 15 incidents having involved B.C. Ferries ships in the last… 36 years!

We’re talking about a fleet that currently logs around 145,000 sailings a year. That’s 15 incidents for over 5 million sailings. All right, let’s say the numbers were lower back then. 15 incidents for, say 500,000, or a 1,000,000 sailings. That’s still an amazing safety record. And then in those 15 incidents, somebody was killed when a ferry collided with a power boat. Duh. Which of a power boat and a ferry has the best chances of seeing – and avoiding – the other??? Once again, I’m not taking sides, there might have been grave mistakes made, but does it turn the event into a systematic rule?

Yet, that newspaper titled its column « A history of trouble ». So what are we after here? Blood? Somebody’s blood will spill for sure, if somebody was actually guilty, when the investigation concludes. Until then, can’t we just feel sympathy for the ones affected and accept the fact that life is inherently dangerous?

Living in a fake cocoon pretending that nothing can touch us and that if something does, it will be somebody else’s fault, won’t change the unavoidable: we are all mortals, and some will go before others. There are times when things just go wrong. It doesn’t happen often, and it shouldn’t be so artificially built up into a media frenzy, because while we are staring at that front page, a thousand other people are dying of other causes that won’t even make the last newspaper page, whether it’d be because of drugs, firearms, car accidents, illness, hunger, stupid wars, intolerance, or just plain bad luck or the end of the road.

[The Lions, only summits of the Vancouver area above the tree line, gave their name to the Lions Gate bridge and the local football team...]

[Capilano Lake with the Grouse Mountain cable car pylons on the right]

A late afternoon departure, hopping on the Seabus, catching bus #236 at Lonsdale Quay, a quick stop at the end of the line to investigate the condition of the Grouse Grind, and then back to the Capilano River for a few water shots...

[The Capilano river just below the Salmon Hatchery]

Writing from a table by a large window in the Lonsdale Quay Market, I can’t help but to ponder, once more, Vancouver’s strange magic.

The sun is slowly setting across the Burrard Inlet, turning North Vancouver into an orange mosaic. Red and white tug boats are tied up to a dock next to me, patiently awaiting their turn to take part in the port’s never-ending ballet. The Seabuses come and go endlessly, clockwork timing and total efficiency.

Vancouver is made of extremes and contradictions. Maybe it is her high contrasts that make her so fascinating and completely addictive.

Where else can one find, in one package deal, the richest and the poorest neighborhoods of an entire country, an extremely densely populated urban core of high-rises surrounded by the sea and framed by snowcapped mountains, and sixty-eight recorded ethnicities cohabitating in a swirling, ever changing playground?

Continue reading "Complicated Vancouver"

I usually take my camera with me to work, but not today. And sure enough, we had this afternoon the most extraordinary display of Mother Nature’s incredible imagination.

It was late, the sun was low and the weather moody. Lots of multilayered clouds and a big rain storm headed our way. And yet, while the shower approached and surrounded the tower, the sun kept shining far in the distance and reflected on English Bay.

The rain intensified, the world turned a dull gray and curtains of water seemed to be flapping in the wind around us. People in the street even reported hail mixed in with the rain, which wouldn’t surprise me from the sweet cumulonimbus that was towering above us.

And then slowly, because nothing lasts forever, the rain moved pass us and headed towards the north shore, erasing the mountains from our view. The sun found its way through distant cloud layers and turned the Burrard Inlet into liquid gold.

That’s when it happened. A rainbow. No, two rainbows. Two FULL rainbows. I had never seen such a thing and didn’t think it was possible. Two complete circles, (or almost complete because a ten or fifteen degree arc was missing where the rainbows seemed to touch the ground below us, and the very upper part was hidden by the restaurant floor above us), the inner one brightly colored and perfectly defined, the outer slightly fainter. On a background of pure gold and clouds so dark they were like the night. And I didn’t have my camera.

When the rainbows faded, the sunlight played with the tormented clouds, highlighting rebel patches torn away from the core by the violence of an invisible fury. The mountains reappeared little by little, shyly, their slopes clinging to a blanket of fog. And then they lit up briefly, it was sunset. And I didn’t have my camera!

« While private gunrunners continue to thrive, the world’s biggest arms suppliers are the U.S., U.K., Russia, France and China.

They also are the five permanent members of the U.N. security council. »

These two sentences appearing before the end credits of Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War are probably the strongest message of the whole movie. The intention was right but the result is weak. Important theme chosen, good questions asked, correct answers offered (or the lack thereof), but without sufficient power and through a moderate drama intensity diluted by the somewhat comical narration of Yuri (Cage).

However the acting is good, the photography excellent and the soundtrack, superb. Worth watching, even if only to have seen it.

« It’s so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. »

[Yuri about the Russian AK-47 assault rifle.]