It was the evening of Nov. 27th. A rare outflow of Arctic air from the continent had collided with incoming Pacific storms, unleashing winter’s full strength and bringing cold temperatures and heavy snow to the Greater Vancouver area.

Earlier that day, I’d left the struggling valley behind and gone to my favorite spot on the North Shore, Lynn Canyon, which hadn’t disappointed me. The place was almost unrecognizable under its new soft white blanket, but every bit as beautiful as always.

I had then taken a chance and headed up to Grouse despite the completely overcast skies, still falling snow and failing light. The weather in Vancouver is well known for its last-minute, late-afternoon clearing and the forecast had been optimistic, so I was, too.

I arrived at the top in an almost empty, cold and dark gondola just before sunset time. The visibility was down to zero as the peak was literally in the clouds. From the exit of the Red Skyride bunker, I could barely see the huge wooden sculptures that sit next to the chalet, a mere hundred meters away.

But I had guessed right. As I walked around, amazed by the thickness of the clouds, a hint of yellow light began to appear above the station. All of a sudden, everything was possible. I got the camera out, and the rest is history. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

I was out for about 2 hours, from before sunset until way past it; from total cloudiness back to it; from a comfortable feeling of warmth to wet and cold feet, frozen pants up to my knees and painful fingers. But the camera never flinched, happily clicking away and hiding between shots inside the relative protection of my open fleece. The temperature wasn’t much below –9 C, and it even got warmer as time went by. But as opposed to the skiers and boarders around me, I didn’t move a lot and spent most of my fun knee-deep in the snow, immobile, waiting.

Strangely, I felt, the whole time, as if I was actually re-doing something that had already been done. It wasn’t until I saw the pictures on a computer screen that I realized what it was: the great Samivel had been there before. Maybe not physically - his playground was the Alps - but in essence. Because mountains are mountains and their spirit travels across oceans, and know no boundaries.

I’d just been photographing what he had once painted. Or better, I had been part of it. I had walked inside one of his scenes, a tiny humble photographer trying hard to take pictures of a majestic giant landscape with a miniscule camera. I recognized the pastel tones, the simple lines, the soft curves, the peace all around me, the nostalgia. It was all there. I hope I did him justice.

A year ago exactly, I arrived in Vancouver. I had minimal luggage, big hopes, bigger dreams and even bigger worries. Turns out some of the worries were justified, others weren’t. And here I am. Almost a Vancouverite, still homeless in my heart which is a drag because home is where the heart is. And by homeless I mean the absence of a port of call rather than that of a roof, which I have the luxury of enjoying tonight as the outside effective temperatures drop below -15º C.

Vancouver has turned out to be a remarkable place, just as I’d imagined. In fact it is such an amazing city that it seems the locals have never quite gotten over the unique extremeness of it. In their minds and hearts, Vancouver always is the best, the worse and nothing in between. So since I rooted myself here, I have witnessed a year-long series of records and firsts, and lasts, and always’s too.

December and January gave us a record uninterrupted number of rainy days, and that’s saying a lot in the land of eternal rain. Then the spring cherry blossoms were quoted by some as the earliest and most beautiful in years. A extraordinary summer followed, setting records for the number of sunny days, and plain and simple heat. Then there were those amazing fall colors, nothing like the past years for sure. And then the torrential downpour of November which caused water turbidity levels to skyrocket to an unprecedented record high and resulted in a never-seen city-wide boil water advisory.

And now it’s bloody snowing like if the gods had forgotten we are actually located west of the Rockies. The forecast calls for another 10-20 cm (Environment Canada) or even 35-45cm (Weather Network) and I’m sure we will set new records of this and that. According to the local blogs, Vancouverites can’t drive in snow and the city shuts down when white. Power was out in many places, and, and... Ok. Enough... It all happens elsewhere, and usually much worse, and much better. Except everywhere else, it’s just another day. Here it’s breaking news, it’s something to talk about. Why not. I guess that’s what blogs were invented for.

After all, for many to BLOG is to Bitch, Laugh at, Offend and Gossip. But I don’t remember reading much about the beauty of it all, and the luck in it for us, and the gratefulness for not having a boring routine (and may those of you very much worth reading forgive me; you know who you are, I hope.)

So yes, Vancouver rocks. No, it’s not the only place that does. Yes, it’s a love and hate relationship. No, I’m not considering divorce, and neither are most. And maybe, just maybe, we could make it better. Starting with putting a roof over each and every head - And awarding each citizen a free snow shovel.

French version - Ah vous chantiez, j’en suis fort aise. Et bien pelletez, maintenant.

English version - That’s a lot of snow, eh?

Well maybe not the house, but the street. Here’s more snow madness; the little bit of a hill (15th Avenue) made all the difference and there’s much more snow on the groud then downtown, even though not nearly as much as in North Van which looked just like Saint Sauveur, QC in the dead of winter...

As promised, more pictures from the VanDusen Gardens. Still to come, the streets at night, Lynn Canyon and Grouse Mountain at sunset.

While in the Nation (sic) of Québec people are still wondering if Gilles Vigneault was right to say « Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver », Vancouver is being given a well deserved lesson and rather stunning proof that « Mon chemin ce n’est pas un chemin, c’est la neige. »

I was so wrong yesterday writing about how the few flurries we’d had would be « as bad as it gets ». It has now been snowing non-stop for 36 hours. The snow, which at first was shy and melting instantly upon touching the ground, has taken control of the city and blanketed our lives with a thick white cover. Roads are a mess; snow plowers that I didn’t know we had have magically appeared and are trying to keep the streets clear.

Kids and adults alike are playing outside, simple parks have become crowded ski hills and murderous snow fights are erupting everywhere. The city has for now forgotten that it’s living under a boil water advisory in its 10th day. Christmas, this year, arrived early.

Out all day, I walk and walked and walked, ending up at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. Gone were the colorful leafs of a too short fall season, but the place was still mesmerizing. 10 or 15 cm of fresh powdery snow were torturing the poor trees which, unaccustomed to such weight, were dropping otherwise healthy branches like as many tears of pain.

I will post more pictures as soon as I’ve processed them. For now, here’s a quick glance at Vancouver today, 26th of November, 2006.

[ Written from Waves on Main, while someone with a sick sense of humor was playing Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville... ]

Tonight that’s it. If there remained any doubt in some spaced out minds, it has been erased. Winter is upon Vancouver and as a proof, it is releasing its first snow on the city. It’s wet snow, of course, and the flurries are barely able to leave their footprint on cold windshields, but it has been falling for a few hours now, making sure that it was noticed by all. Granted, that’s about as bad as the weather will ever get out here. But an emotional barrier has been broken and a vertical safety perimeter, breached.

On the other hand, the North Shore Mountains have been dusted with white powder for a while now, and skiers are rejoicing as the three ski hills have or will start operation imminently. Last night, through a very tormented sky, I caught a glimpse of the snowy peak of Grouse Mountain. It was an amazing sight as nature once again painted itself in the most extraordinary yet subtle shades of a fleeting sunset. I can’t decide which one of the 3 I like best, so here they all are, along with the « morning after » shot.

« Winter, solitude’s bedfellow, is the smartest of all the seasons, simply because it knows that it doesn’t have to produce any heat. » [From Matthew Good’s blog]

« About 100 icebergs drifting northward from Antarctica have created a new tourist trade in New Zealand. One iceberg was even visible from the coast of the island nation - the first time that has happened since June of 1931. » [From the Global Warming Blog and MSNBC]

And then there’s this cute video sent by Anonymous that you might want to watch when you have the blues, it will will put an instant smile on your face.

Up at 5:00 am this morning, I decided to head out to work early and develop a few pictures while having a coffee at Waves on Richards (they boil filtered water and the NTU hasn’t climbed back up above 18/19 NTU over the week-end, which is good enough for me.)

I walked down to the bus stop in complete darkness; the streets were still wet from a night down poor and reflected the car’s headlights in this precious time of the day the Spanish call « la madrugada ». And there, waiting for my bus to come and sweep me downtown, I happened to glance up at the sky. Some low clouds were lazily lying on the North Shore Mountains.

But then, right ahead of me above the trees to the west, something caught my eye; a spec of light, then another, and then many more. The sky was full of stars! And even better, they were not just any stars, they were my friends; constellations I knew intimately for having gazed at them for hours, from all latitudes and longitudes.

The ones that had initially caught my attention were those of Orion the Hunter; the bright Rigel at his right foot, the red giant Betelgeuse at his left shoulder and Mintaka on his belt. To the south was Sirius in Canis Major, the big dog, brightest celestial object in the Earth’s sky. Above it was Procyon, of Orion’s smallest dog. Above it still were the Gemini, Castor and Pollux. Then to the right was the great rectangle of Auriga with its brightest star Capella. And below it, the V shaped head of the bull, Taurus, with a single eye marked by the red giant Aldebaran. And finally, even further to the north, the Pleiades, a faint cluster of stars called the 7 Sisters, whom Orion is said to be protecting from the bull with his two hunting dogs and his bow.

Through time and space, I was instantly transported across the ocean and landed far in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, on the upper deck of the ship where I first started putting names on all these distant worlds. I had bought a used celestial navigation book in a dusty bookstore held by a French woman in Port Vila, Vanuatu; every time I could, I’d grab the book and go talk to the Filipino seaman on duty on the bridge, who knew the stars intimately. And slowly, they started talking to me too.

This morning at my bus stop, I must have shone as bright as the stars.

...

[For those interested in the wonders of our sky, I highly recommend the wonderful open source planetarium Stellarium. Free and totally cool.]

I left early this morning, after literally falling out of bed. The dream I had been having before the fall was about skydiving and I left home with a big bruise on my forehead, having leaped out of the plane and immediately assumed the Delta position for maximum horizontal speed in freefall. My bedside table has a very sharp corner.

I then followed a rather disorganized wandering pattern as I could not decide where I wanted to take pictures. The fact that I had forgotten to bring the camera might have had something to do with it. It’s funny how the greatest opportunities always appear out of an impossibility.

Some things we plan, we sit and we invent and we plot and cook up; others are works of inspiration, of poetry; and it was this genius hand that pushed me up the* Burnaby hill and around the campus and down to the tracks by the Inlet. I wanted to see some trains.

So I walked for hours along the old train tracks, not noticing that vegetation had overgrown them and hence the only train that would ever come my way on those was the phantom train of my wildest dreams. Before I was a skydiver.

I could no longer tell how long I had been out there. It somehow seemed like days had gone by, with their nights and chilly sunrises; with their long, lonely hours of gray skies and no one around. Surprised and a little dazed, I looked down at my pants and wondered why the mud on my knees was so dry. And why I was so thirsty that I could have drank for an hour from a waterfall of iced water without even catching a breath.

But at least I must have finally found my camera because I had it in my hand. It was a strange camera with a huge spotlight on top of it but that didn’t phase me. I would come in handy to better record the train approaching. Because at last, there is a train headed my way.

I can hear it blowing its whistle repeatedly, a long and whining cry in the night that has fallen, insistent and threatening. The tracks are as cold as the icy water I won’t drink, leading from here to infinity where they seem to bond, as all things in life eventually become one.

When I stepped over the second track, long ago it seems now, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else but filming the moon that shone through a thick layer of clouds. So my foot went down the gap between the metal rail and the rocks without even a hesitation, locking itself underneath the structure with the help of my whole body weight. Then the ankle probably broke and a sharp, nearly unbearable pain made it clear I wouldn’t pry my leg out of the trap’s iron grip.

It’s been a long text message I know, and I am grateful for the emailing capability of my portable phone. But now I am going to send this because the battery is dying and so will I soon, for the train’s headlight is growing brighter...

[* Inspired by Boris Vian’s « Les fourmis »
and with the brief help of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – « (I’ll Love You) Till the End of the World »]

It hadn’t come to my mind immediately, but we are facing a crisis unique in the city’s history: our coffee addiction is seriously jeopardized! In today’s update on the GVRD drinking water situation, the online article of the Province newspaper commits twenty per cent of its length to the impact of the water restrictions on the coffee business. Clearly, a most critical issue.

The good news, for others, is that the advisory has been lifted for all areas except Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver and some areas of the Island. And as for us, well, with more rain expected all week-end, we’re just doing our best...

« And I said Lord, oh Lord, you’ve got to win
The water’s down and the night is riding in
That storm is still on time, oh my coffee’s on the line
Oh Lord, you’ve got to win »
[Vince de Burgh]