Life in Vancouver is about rituals. 
There’s drinking coffee, which usually involves an order with a staggering collection of adjectives like I - would - like - a - grande - skim - caramel - latté - machiato - no - oignons - to - go - please. There’s running obsessively. There’s the Canucks. There’s talking about the rain (or the lack thereof.) There’s walking down Robson, sizing up the competition. There’s getting on a ferry regularly to go somewhere have a coffee. There’s waiting for the white pedestrian sign to cross a street, drinking a coffee. There’s adding the word « like » to every sentence and finishing every other with « eh ». There’s enjoying the many parks and mountains around, a coffee in hand. There’s reading 24 hours on the bus. There’s drinking coffee again.
And then there’s the 9 O’Clock Gun. The authentic 12-pounder, muzzle-loaded naval canon is every Vancouverite’s friend and fires from the east end of Stanley Park at precisely 9:00 pm, 365 days a year. Perpetuating an old tradition of blurry origins, it is now triggered electronically at night, just for the sound of it. Cities as far as Mission, 60 km east of Vancouver, claim to have heard the gun when the wind is right. Miss 604 has written a post about it and there is also this interesting article about the old canon’s history.
So just as some go watch fireworks, others go watch the gun fire. The little beast has been encased in a glass prison for safety reasons and warns passers-by with a combination of visual and audible signals when about to fire. At that point, if you’re nearby, you’ll surely want to plug your ears. And then you not only will see and hear the blast, but you’ll feel it too. The air displacement is surprisingly strong in a radius of up to 30 feet. But the show is short lived. After a wait of variable duration (some folks arrive 30 to 60 minutes in advance to enjoy the sunset), the whole thing is over in 10 seconds.
So after taking a few pictures of a gorgeous sunset, I install the camera on a tripod, set it for a 15 seconds exposure at the smallest aperture and ASA, and I wait. 10 seconds warning. Get ready. 5 seconds. Finger on the shutter. 3 seconds. Now! 2 seconds. Plug the ears. 1 second. Stare. 0. A huge blast. Intense light. The air moves as if an immense door had just been slammed. Heavy smoke. The 15 seconds exposure ends.
Click on the canon picture above to see the blast.
« We thought that we had the answers,
It was the questions we had wrong. »[U2 - 11 O’Clock Tick Tock]
