Through My Lens: English Bay Paddlers
When you live by English Bay, you never know what you’ll see on the water. Thanks to the power of my camera’s zoom lens, I was able to get this shot early yesterday morning.
Salish Eagle
My latest BC Ferry ride — and my third of the summer — was on this boat, the Salish Eagle, which took me to and from Galiano Island just over a month ago.
Three of these Salish-Class vessels came into service in 2017 and a fourth one last year. Built in Gdańsk, Poland, they are the first ships in BC Ferries’ fleet to run on liquefied natural gas, thereby reducing their emissions. Compact compared to the bigger boats that sail between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, the Salish-Class vessels go to and from the Southern Gulf Islands and between the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island. They carry up to 600 passengers and crew and 138 cars, and I absolutely love sailing on them.
Each Salish-Class vessel has original Coast Salish artwork adorning its interiors and exteriors. John Marston of the Stz’uminus First Nation is the one who designed the artwork you see on the Salish Eagle.
Little Qualicum Falls
There’s a gem of a campground on Vancouver Island I’ve been going to since forever. It’s called Little Qualicum Falls, and a family weekend there at the beginning of June was my second BC ferry trip of the summer.
Qualicum, or Quallchum, means “where the dog salmon run.” Dog salmon (also known as chum) is one of the five major species of the BC salmon fishery.
We lucked out with absolute picture-perfect weather for our Qualicum weekend, which we were all incredibly grateful for. A year ago, we were in the thick of a more typical Juneuary and our plans to go to Qualicum were scuttled before we even got into the car.
The provincial park sits alongside the Little Qualicum River and around Cameron Lake. It’s a great family campground with lots of trails to explore, lots of swimming holes to jump into, and then, of course, there are the falls.
As we often do, we took a quick side trip to Cathedral Grove on our last day before turning around to head to the ferry. Driving along Highway 4, we noticed a helicopter with a heli-bucket scooping water up from Cameron Lake. We rounded a bend in the road, and then we saw it — the wildfire on top of one of the mountains along the highway.
It was a small one, but it grew, as wildfires do, and a day or two later, that same highway we had driven on was closed for two weeks, completely shutting off the coastal communities of western Vancouver Island from the rest of the province. A detour over logging roads was put in place, but it was a rough route and not recommended for tourist traffic.
The highway reopened once the wildfire was no longer burning, but assessments of the mountain slopes above the highway have deemed them unstable. And so, beginning Monday, Highway 4 will be closed for most of the day between 9 and 5 to allow crews to do rock scaling above the highway. They figure the work will take at least a month, which is really going to mess up the tourist season for Tofino and Ucluelet.
I’m glad we got our Island weekend, but I feel for all those whose summer plans are being thwarted by a wildfire that has long been put out.
Through My Lens: Sidney by the Sea
Summer has only just started and already I’ve had a number of ferry rides.
My first was a quick hop over to Sidney to have lunch with a friend. Sidney is located on the Saanich Peninsula of Vancouver Island and is considered a suburb of Victoria. It has a lovely waterfront you can stroll along (see above photo), a handful of touristy-type shops (that all seemed to close early), and quite a few places to have lunch (all of which were very busy despite it being a weekday). It took us three tries before we found a place that didn’t have a half-hour wait, although I suspect the wait might have been more about staffing shortages than about there being no empty tables.
It doesn’t feel like summer, to me, until I’ve been on a BC ferry. The trip from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay takes you through Active Pass, one of the most stunning places on the planet, in my opinion. I could not stop gushing about how beautiful my morning’s ferry ride had been to our server at the pub where my friend and I had lunch. She gave me such an odd look that I realized either I need to get out more, or she has never lived anywhere else and still takes her surroundings for granted.
I sure don’t.
Dishing: Paul
After the upheaval of the past few years, I am still marvelling at what a treat it is to be able to meet up with friends in restaurants again. Such a little thing, really. And yet such a big thing.
And so it was that I found myself on Robson Street for a lunch date yesterday. Paul is as ubiquitous in Paris as Starbucks is in Vancouver and I was thrilled when I heard that a location of this longtime French institution was coming to my home city.
Paul in the Jardin des Tuileries
The bakery and café’s Vancouver location — the only one in all of Canada — has been open since 2021, but yesterday was my first visit (because, you know, pandemic).
Paul on Robson Street
You have to suspend disbelief to think you are in Paris, though. Although my crêpe aux champignons et aux épinards (mushroom and spinach crepe) was excellent, the size of the pastries we perused in the display case on our way out were supersized, not small and delicate the way they are in French bakeries. And the seating area was light and airy with tables quite far apart, not squished together as they are in Parisian cafés.
But the service was very Canadian and it was a wonderful way to while away a couple of hours with a friend. I will be back.
Snowy Gastown
As of a month ago, Vancouver had received more snow this winter than Edmonton. As someone who spent her childhood in Edmonton (where, in the coldest part of each winter, I would stand in our snow-covered driveway and try to remember what summer felt like — I could never do it), I find that fact rather astonishing.
A bunch more of the white stuff arrived this past week. Our streets have been a sloppy mess since Saturday night as the temperatures hovered just above freezing during the day. Every street corner I had to cross was an ankle-deep puddle that reminded me, ironically, of those early spring days in Edmonton when the snow melts all at once. Our schoolyard was always a giant puddle on days like that, and I often walked home from school with soaking wet feet.
Here, in Vancouver, more snow was forecasted last night, but it rained instead, and now most of the snow in my neighbourhood is gone.
Typically after a heavy snowfall, I head to Stanley Park to take photos of snow-covered trees. After the big dump of snow we had just before Christmas, I decided to head instead to Gastown. Here are a couple of the photos I took that day.
So pretty.
Through My Lens: Daffodil Surprise
These daffodils next to English Bay have become a harbinger every year to announce the change in seasons. They pop up in mid to late January — which is awfully early for daffodils in this part of the world — but I’ve heard they are a variety that is bred to bloom early. Plus, that part of the seawall faces south.
Whatever the reason, we’re always happy to see them. And they catch people who aren’t from the neighbourhood by surprise, as they can’t believe their eyes.
Through My Lens: Reflections
Here’s another photo of Lost Lagoon that I took some time ago. It’s a favourite of mine; the clouds reflected in the water remind me of a Dutch landscape painting.
Through My Lens: In the Pink
Did you know that three days ago was Blue Monday? Apparently it’s the most depressing Monday of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
I can believe it. But yesterday, when the sun (finally) came out and I got myself over to Lost Lagoon, all I saw was pink. I took this photo a few minutes after the sun went down.
Merry Christmas!
Kensington Place, English Bay, Vancouver
There and Back Again 