Dry Island Buffalo Jump
Speaking of cruising the Alberta countryside, there is one drive that my dad and I took a couple of summers ago that I enjoyed immensely. We drove about 100 kilometres southeast from Red Deer to Dry Island Buffalo Jump.
Dry Island is a small badlands area straddling the Red Deer River.
The small plateau in the centre of the badlands is Dry Island.
Buffalo jumps are natural cliff formations that First Nations hunters used to help them kill buffalo. The hunters up above would drive the animals over the cliff to the hunters waiting below.
The other neat-to-know fact about Dry Island is that it was the site of an important paleontological discovery: that of part of the Eotriceratops xerinsularis. (And if you memorize the spelling of the names of all the dinosaurs discovered in Alberta, you are a long ways to winning your next spelling bee.)
Through My Lens: Granaries
I was catching up with my cousin’s wife the other day by email, and she told me that she and her husband (my cousin) are enjoying their topless Friday evenings.
Nope ― it’s not what it sounds like.
They’re cruising the Alberta countryside in their red convertible.
I was jealous. But not of the red convertible.
I was jealous because there is nothing quite as beautiful as the Alberta countryside in the summertime.
Team USA
There are an awful lot of Americans wandering around town this weekend.
How do I know they’re Americans?
Well, they are wearing a lot of Stars and Stripes. On their T-shirts. On their caps. Even on their footwear. That American flag is everywhere. And if they aren’t sporting a flag on their clothing, they’re dressed in red, white, and blue.
Why so many more American tourists in town than is usual for a July 4 holiday weekend?
It likely had to do with a certain soccer match that Vancouver hosted today at BC Place.
Yup, it’s a World Cup summer once again. Congratulations, USA!
To commemorate the victory of Team USA, here’s a photo of the biggest American flag I have ever seen. I photographed this one hanging on the building that houses the New York Stock Exchange on my last visit to New York.
West End Farmers Market
I know summer has well and truly arrived when the West End Farmers Market returns.
As it did today.
And it’ll be here, every Saturday, until the end of October.
Oh joy, oh bliss. Shopping at your local farmers market is the best way to maintain a 100-mile diet.
Besides the West End Farmers Market where I shop (located alongside Nelson Park), Vancouver has six other summer markets. (There are also two winter markets.) You can buy fresh produce, cheese, baked goods, meat, poultry, and fish, and artisan products such as olives or fruit jams or soap. Vancouverites spend $8 million a year at their farmers markets and support 265 local farmers and artisans in doing so.
The best part? Everything tastes like summer. Truly.
Go on. What are you waiting for?
Through My Lens: Lunch Break
It’s that time of year.
What time of year?
It’s the time of year when we Canadians maximize every second of our short summers by spending as much time as possible outdoors.
Did you know that studies have shown workers are more satisfied with their jobs if they eat their lunch sitting on a park bench instead of in a café or (shudder) at their desks?
This chap is Lunchbox Joe. He’s enjoying his break in Edmonton’s Sir Winston Churchill Square.
Get outside, people!
Freighters in English Bay
English Bay (aka the waiting room to Canada’s largest and busiest port) always has a dozen or more freighters anchored in it. The ships wait there, sometimes for days, until it’s their turn to load or unload their cargo.
Because they are always there, I think of the freighters in English Bay as part of my landscape. I don’t pay much attention to them other than sometimes using them to add interest to a photo.
Until this week. On Wednesday night the M/V Marthassa, a Greek-owned bulk carrier on its maiden voyage from Korea, was anchored in the bay waiting to take on a load of grain when it began leaking bunker fuel. More than two tonnes of the stuff would go into the water before the leak was stopped. Within hours, some of that oil had reached the beaches.
I took a long walk along those beaches today to get a closer look at what was going on and to reassure myself that everything was all right.
It’s not.
But it will be.
This week was a wake-up call for me. I will never again take my beach and my bay ― or the freighters in the bay ― for granted.
Through My Lens: Bentley
This is a favourite photo of mine, and today is a good day to post it to the blog. That’s because this afternoon my dad and I took a drive to Bentley to deliver his sister (my aunt) safely home after a family get-together. Bentley, Alberta, is a small town due west of Lacombe where I spent a good chunk of my childhood summers.
Yup, I’m back in Wild Rose Country.
I took this photo almost five years ago. Alberta’s grain elevators are quickly disappearing ― in 1934, there were over 1700 of these iconic structures, but today there are maybe 120. Happily for me, this one is still standing.
Through My Lens: Vancouver in February
I feel a bit cruel posting this photo, but, well, it does reflect the reality of what it’s like to live in Vancouver.
Vancouver in February = crocuses.
I feel cruel because my friends in Halifax and Boston are struggling to keep up with all the snow shovelling and my friends in Toronto and New York are facing endless days of sub-Arctic temperatures ― all while Vancouver is experiencing a non-winter.
And now, on top of all that, we get an early spring.
I saw daffodils in bloom in Stanley Park on New Year’s Day. The snow drops made their first appearance about ten days later. The crocuses have been up for weeks, and I saw the first cherry blossoms on February 11 ― about two weeks earlier than most years ― and they’re now in full bloom. Last weekend I even saw a flowering rhododendron.
And all this past week I’ve noticed the magnolia trees are starting to blossom. I have never seen magnolia flowers appear so early ― the trees typically bloom in April.
It doesn’t seem fair, given the winter the rest of the continent is having (and it definitely doesn’t seem Canadian).
But, hey, whoever said life is fair?
Someone has to live in Vancouver. Might as well be me.
Through My Lens: Foggy Lost Lagoon
I took this photo about a month ago at Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park. I was there specifically to photograph ducks. That takes patience, always, and concentration, sometimes, but my focus was interrupted by the fellow beside me.
“Did you see the Pied-billed Grebe?” he said, rather excitedly. I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw the duck.
And then, as we stood there, the fog rolled in in about the same amount of time as it took me to get my camera out of my pocket. I saw the shot (his Pied-billed Grebe was flanked by two Common Mergansers), took the photo, and then, well, I couldn’t help myself. I turned to him and said, “I can’t believe I get to live here!”
He smiled.
“It’s a $10-billion dollar backyard,” he said.
That it is. But moments like those are priceless.
There and Back Again 