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I thought the gentle reader might appreciate a few more glimpses of autumnal hues – before everything fades to a wintery grey for the the next three months or so. Fall is glorious, though it is the season of which I am least fond. Winter serves a purpose but unless one likes to get out to play in the snow and ice it is not one that some folk – self included – find easy to love. Still – it does eventually give way to the spring and that is a very good thing.
Good grief! Here we are – already well into November. The Halloween decorations are coming down and the over-zealous have already started on Christmas…
Time for some soothing images of autumnal colours – to demonstrate what a beautiful world this is despite what we insist on inflicting upon it:
To Vancouver for the weekend – to see Peter Gabriel at the Rogers Arena. More on that in the next post – but first, some images of what Douglas Coupland quite understandably calls the ‘City of Glass’. Vancouver has that ‘big city’ feel – much more imposing than quaint little old Victoria.
Visitors always want to know why Victoria is the provincial capital of British Columbia and not Vancouver. Not much to be said there – except that it is what it is. Personally – eager as I am to absorb the big city vibes for a while, I am always much happier when we get back to the island.
But then – I do come from island people…
Tags: Music, Peter Gabriel, Photo, Travel, Vancouver
“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
Dr. Seuss
It is high time that I finished posting photos from our recent travels to a variety of locations around British Columbia (not all of which we had originally planned to visit!). Let’s see if I can wrap things up in this one post!
We spent a night in Nanaimo – largely so that we could have lunch with The Girl’s mother and a dear friend of ours from Duncan. Whilst there we also indulged in some retail therapy and I took the opportunity afforded by being on the 14th floor of the Coast Bastion hotel to take some pictures of a favourite subject of mine – float planes!
Well – they are something that we just don’t see in the south east of England!
From Nanaimo we drove up the east coast of Vancouver island to Courtney/Comox, adjacent towns in the Comox valley that I had somehow contrived not yet to visit. We really liked the feeling of Courtney – the which has a sort of artsy vibe somewhat akin to Salt Spring island (should one be in BC) or St. Ives (should one be in the southwest of England.
In spite of its charms I somehow I managed not to take pictures of Courtney (not sure where my brain went!) but I did take the camera on an excursion to nearby Mount Washington – ski and outdoor resort.
No snow at this time of year, of course, though no shortage of wildfire smoke.
This little chap is a jay known as a Whiskey Jack – the which is Canada’s national bird (who knew? – certainly not this recent Canadian)…
These apparently fearless little birds are not named with reference to the Irish grain-based alcoholic beverage, but from the Cree word ‘Wisakedjak‘. This makes the cheeky little fellow the only Canadian bird commonly known by a traditional indigenous name.
Here he is – ready for his close up:
Here he is – gone!…
Tags: British Columbia, Holiday, Photo, Travel, Vancouver Island
“You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”
Unknown
The cabin by the lake in the North Thompson to which I made reference in my last post (which body of water I will refrain from identifying any more closely) is one of my favourite places in the world (as much as I know of it anyway) to take photographs. The constantly changing light means that from one minute to the next the subjects of my eager snapping metamorphose into ever more sensational phantasms.
For evidence of this supposition – see below. I strongly recommend clicking on the images to gain the full effect.
Tags: British Columbia, Cabin, Holiday, Photo, Travel, wildfires
“In Canada, anything that’s not in the city is referred to as a cottage. Or a log cabin”.
Dolores O’Riordan
As detailed in my last post – having fled the wildfires in the Okanagan The Girl and I took refuge in her cousin’s cabin in the North Thompson. There was still plenty of smoke from the Adams Lake fire just a few miles away on the other side of the mountain, but the lake and its surrounds were mercifully calm.
Naturally I had the camera with me…
These guys weren’t going to let a little smoke interfere with their wakeboarding.
We went out driving one day around Clearwater and Birch Island – this being the area from which The Girl hails. We worked our way back down the logging roads through Little Fort and Chu Chua and met this unexpected fellow traveler. Hard to tell who was more surprised…
Tags: British Columbia, Cabin, Holiday, Photo, Travel, wildfires, wildlife
As trailed in my recent post The Girl and I have been (and are still at time of writing!) traveling within British Columbia. This trip had several purposes – to attend an engagement organised by The Girl’s First Nation – to (re)visit friends and family – to explore parts of BC that I, at least, have not yet seen – and to compensate in some small measure for our disastrous venture abroad earlier in the summer…
In this latter regard I am reminded of Lloyd Bridges’ running gag as Steve McCroskey in the classic 80s film comedy – ‘Airplane’. As things veer from bad to worse McCroskey repeats the mantra:
”Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up smoking/drinking/amphetamines…” etc, etc
Well – it looks like this has been the wrong year for us to go out traveling!
Now – it is clearly in poor taste to make jokes at a time that other folk have been suffering terrible loses (though mercifully not in terms of life and limb) but that is fundamentally the way that we Brits cope with such things.
A week and a half ago we headed for Kelowna in the Okanagan for The Girl’s three day engagement. Those readers who do not live in Canada may not have been following recent events in BC too closely, but that Thursday was the night that the big wildfire north of Kelowna swept down over the mountain and devoured the first of the several hundred properties in West Kelowna that have since been burned to the ground.
The image at the top of this post was taken from our hotel room shortly after we arrived. By the next morning very little could be seen at all.
The engagement was cancelled late that first evening and we were advised to retreat from Kelowna the next morning so that hotel rooms could be made available for those who had been forced to evacuate their homes. We made an early dash for Kamloops whilst the roads were yet open.
Following the engagement we had planned a few nights further south in the Okanagan – at Peachland – but by the Sunday evening travel orders had been issued to prevent tourists from driving to various critical areas of the province, the which was necessary so that the emergency vehicles would not be hampered in their operations and also so that further souls would not be put at risk, adding to the heavy burden already upon those services.
We were extremely fortunate, then, in that The Girl’s cousin – who lives in Kamloops but who has a lakeside cabin in the North Thompson which has previously been featured in these ramblings – invited us to spend a few days in that smoky but relatively safe part of the province.
This offer we most gratefully accepted. Pictures and further excursion meanderings to follow…
Tags: British Columbia, Hoilday, The Girl, Travel, wildfires
“Contrariwise . . . if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”
Lewis Carroll
We are – it should be self-evident – now truly into the depths (or heights, according to your preferences) of summer.
Further – should you not have been aware of the fact – 2023 is an El Nino year. This regular but unwanted visitor – when added to the already serious effects of climate change – results in the sort of world-wide craziness that we have not encountered in my lifetime. Climate records are being broken daily – whether that be in terms of the world-wide wildfire season or of the equally world-wide highest recorded temperatures. These over-heated events seem to alternate with with vicious storms which cause flash flooding.
On the west coast of Canada it has been dry and sunny, but we have been blessed thus far in avoiding such unpleasant phenomena as ‘heat domes’ and ‘atmospheric rivers’. The wildfire smoke too is – for now at least – blowing in the other direction. I gather that it is raining in parts of the UK, though the southern European nations are currently broiling.
It is somewhat difficult, therefore, not to feel guilty when one is seated in comfort, with one’s supper, surrounded by good and friendly folk, listening to the Brentwood Bay Music in the Park of a summer evening. The crew of Victoria luminaries pictured above are last week’s offering – the long running local Steely Dan tribute act – the ‘Pretzel Logic Orchestra’. Their number includes excellent musicians who turn out for various different ensembles and they are all seasoned pros.
Don – The guitarist in the centre of the attached image – can more frequently be found running the sound at Pioneer Park, for other visiting acts. I had a quick word with him after the show this week to congratulate him on his lead guitar work – and in particular on the note perfect rendering of the Larry Carlton guitar solo from ‘Kid Charlemagne‘ (perhaps my favourite ever guitar solo).
In return he told me about the time that he met Larry Carlton!…
Dude!
Tags: Brentwood Bay, Music, Summer, Weather
“I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy”
C. S. Lewis
This post should have featured wild animals in their natural habitats in the Botswana bush – though perhaps not quite: “Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plains”… as John Cleese would have it.
Instead, here are some photos of the flora in our garden:
Scarcely a fortnight had passed since our faith in Canadian theatre received a significant boost as a result of our attendance at The Belfry for Halifax-based 2B Theatre’s production of Ben Caplan, Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch’s musical play – “Old Stock” – before we found ourselves once again cheering on a Canadian musical production and enjoying ourselves hugely to boot.
In this instance the show concerned has already garnered a considerably reputation – being none other than the multi-award winning (including an Olivier Award for Best New Musical) – “Come From Away“.
That “Come From Away” (which tells the story of the 7,000 airline passengers who found themselves stranded in Gander, Newfoundland, following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001) might be the most successful musical to have come out of Canada is arguable… but it wouldn’t be a very long argument.
The show is a fabulous ensemble piece, excellently staged and choreographed, which uses the music of Newfoundland and Labrador to paint vivid vignettes of many of those who were involved. Newfie music is, of course, fundamentally Celtic and, in particular, Irish. As you might imagine there is a fair bit of foot stomping and hand-clapping, delivered with a general all-round panache and enthusiastic energy.
The basic message of the work – which celebrates the kindness and generosity with which the communities concerned pulled together to provide comfort and shelter for those caught up in the tragic crisis – sits so centrally in the spectrum of what it is to be Canadian – that I found myself afterwards declaring to anyone who would listen that this was surely the most Canadian thing that I had ever seen. Further, I pronounced myself amazed that no-one had previously (to my knowledge, anyway) used Newfie music as the basis of a show.
I must admit that I felt slightly guilty that the show had been so successfully re-staged in so many places around the world (including on Broadway and in the West End) for so long before we finally caught up with the North American touring production at the Royal Theatre here in Victoria.
Still – better late than never…
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