In Canada
Herewith some snaps of plant-life in our garden – enjoying the early summer weather. From what I hear Europe (and the UK) is currently burning up in an unexpected heatwave. Our sympathies. We do feel even more blessed than usual at simply enjoying normal May/June style weather.
I do hope that everyone is doing alright…
“In our frenzied attempts to catch up with life, we run right past it. Once we have run past it, what we are in reality attempting to catch is ourselves.”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Looking back through the archives for this almanac I note that I have gotten into the habit of posting – during the late spring/early summer of each year – a succinct gallery of photographs taken in our garden here at the southern end of Vancouver Island.
As one might imagine, these analogous offerings look remarkably similar year on years. Given that much of the garden is furnished with mature shrubs, perennials and ancient (relatively speaking!) trees, this should come as no surprise. The true beauty of the garden in spring-time is that it is at once the same as it ever was – whilst also being ever new.
And how cool is that?!
The title of this post, however, is “Playing catch-up” – so there is clearly something going on here other than the mere uploading of a fresh instalment of an old favourite.
As indeed there is…
Those who follow these things closely might notice (should they care to put any effort into the thing) that we are almost at the start of June and – as yet – no garden images have appeared for this year.
Some reasons for this tardiness have been hinted at in earlier posts, but these reflect only a small part of the whole story. Whereas Mother Nature has been powering ahead with her usual vim and vigour, our attempts at getting the grounds of our abode into shape have been running well behind. These factors have been in play:
As you can see – the start of the year has gone considerably less smoothly than we would have hoped and we may be excused if some normally essential tasks have had to be delayed.
I will see what (if any) images I might have to hand from the world outside our windows…
“I killed my ex lovers and buried to my memories’ grave.
It is January and I am tired of being brave.”
Arzum Uzun
It occurs to me that the month just finished was the first January (with just a couple of exceptions) during which I had not worked since way back in the 1970s. Strangely – and slightly guilt-inductively – it has zipped by and disappeared over the horizon with nary a second thought. How odd!
It helps, of course, that though we have been watching avidly the reports of terrible weathers afflicting different parts of the globe, here – on the west coast of Canada – it has been merely wet… not icily, gustily, torrentially or anything else like that. Just wet!
Yesterday – however – there was sunshine as well – and we marvelled at how the shafts of sunlight pierced the forest at Centennial Park.
Naturally, pictures were taken:
Hey guys – it’s still the middle of winter!!
…to friends, acquaintances and gentle readers…
…from the Kickass Canada Girl and the Imperceptible Immigrant…
we wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and a Happy Hogmany!
As is my habit, here be some Chistmassy images from the Pacific north west; specifically from the splendid home that I am fortunate enough to share with The Girl.
“Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff”
Joan Didion
Last time out I posted a cluster of images of the driftwood that accumulates above the strand line on our beaches here on Vancouver Island – and of the structures that our fellow humans feel compelled to build using it.
I thought I might now just add a few further photographs taken on the same sunny walk. The motivation so to do is in part the fact that the weather has comprised nothing but rain since that most pleasant day and I would like to be able to contemplate other more cheerful moods.
“She stands in tattered gold
Tossing bits of amber and jade
Jewels of a year grown old:
November.”
Zephyr Ware Tarver – “A Queen Makes an Exit”
November is upon us!…
It is high time to wrap up this extended sequence of posts that aim to offer the gentle reader a photographic glimpse of our travels in Alberta and British Columbia back at the start of the summer. These excursions will stick in our minds for a long time but one of the joys of maintaining an online journal such as this is that we can refer easily to such shared memories from many years back. Just yesterday The Girl and I were refreshing our reminiscences of a stay in the Perigord back in 2013!
Anyhow! As we came back down the island following our sojourn in Port Alberni we took time out to spend a few hours on Gabriola island. I have written a little before about our connection to this small island off the coast of the much larger one on which we live and some of these images may already be familiar – but I include them anyway for completeness.
These photos are of the incredible wave-worn rock formations on the northern tip of Gabriola island – the Malaspina Galleries. With our guests we spent a happy interlude exploring the extraordinary formations and textures that the sea and the wind have wrought over the centuries
Nothing more to be said. Our expedition in June to Banff, Jasper, Vancouver and points north on the island was hugely enjoyable and fully lived up to the hopes and expectations that we had for it.
Happy travellers!
“No, the safest thing is to become an island. To make your house a citadel against all the garbage and ugliness in the world. How else can you be sure of anything?”
Nickolas Butler, Shotgun Lovesongs
When we arrived back on the island from our expedition to the Rocky Mountains earlier this summer, one might have expected that to have been the end of our adventuring (for the time-being anyway). Such is not, however, in our nature and The Girl had planned and organised for us a further trip ‘up-island’.
I have written and posted photos before concerning our favourite day out on the water from Port Alberni – the voyage to Bamfield upon the supply ship the MV Frances Barkley. This will doubtless not be the last time that I post images on this subject but it is the latest such.
Enjoy:
In my experience most new visitors to Canada have as their number one must see attraction… bears! Herewith – on the shore of the Alberni inlet – a mother with two cubs. Mission accomplished!
“Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it’s true”
Paul Simon
To mention crossing the Rocky Mountains by train to most travellers is probably to conjure up thoughts of the iconic ‘Rocky Mountaineer’. For those not in the know the ‘Mountaineer’ is a luxury long distance tourist train which traverses Canada from Toronto to Vancouver; broadly in the same category as the Orient Express in Europe.
Now, for my money (of which there is clearly an insufficiency!) there are two main drawbacks to the ‘Mountaineer’:
We travelled instead from Jasper to Vancouver on the regular ViaRail service which operates under the banner of The Canadian. Not quite as iconic perhaps, but pretty close. If you are stirred by the images of the classic stainless steel train sets that make up The Canadian you might care to check out the history and detail of the trains here.
Having boarded at the top of the morning in Jasper we spent much of the daylight part of the 24 hour journey in one of the classic domed panorama cars – the which could have been (and probably were!) designed specifically for the sweeping, dramatic landscapes of the Rockies. Then – whilst we dined in some opulence in one of the splendid restaurant cars – our day cubicle was converted into the curtained bunk berths in which we passed the hours of darkness; though not before retiring to the gorgeous curved observation car (see below) for a digestif.
Come the next morning we awoke to find ourselves rolling gently into Vancouver.
Well – that’s another item crossed off the bucket-list!
“There’s something about the sound of a train that’s very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful”
Paul Simon
It occurs to me that in the course of these extensive prolixities I must at some point have explained that – during my adolescent years – my family was really quite different to many (if not most) others such. That we did not have a television during the period (the 60s) that that infernal device was the be-all and end-all of many folks entertainment (and indeed, education) is simply down to my father’s notions as to what was (and what was not) good for our minds. That we did not have a car was more prosaic, ruled out by my father’s weak eye musculature (the which resulted from a childhood illness). The thought of my mother in charge of a motor vehicle scares me even now – and it is no surprise that the very notion scared her too.
I do know for sure that I have previously recounted tales of my father’s strong pride in his Scottish ancestry and his desire – just as soon as we young ones were old enough to travel – to visit the land of our forefathers. Such was the draw of the highlands that, for the best part of the next decade, we holidayed nowhere else.
Not driving (and certainly not flying, back in those inceptive days) meant travelling by train. It is a truism that rail travel was somehow more elegant back then. The place settings in the dining cars were of porcelain, damask and silver plate; we slept in bunk beds in twin-berth sleeper compartments, waking in time to see ourselves safely across the border and into our native land.
Further, back in 2016 I wrote the following in a post entitled, “Steam“:
“In a way my first introduction to Canada came through the railway magazines that my father collected from his early life right up until he passed away. I gazed in awe at the black and white photographs of enormous North American steam engines hauling trains of apparently endless length through the staggering Rocky Mountains. I recall also being astonished that there could be a place on this earth called ‘Hope’ – and when it came to spiral tunnels and avalanche sheds… my eyes bulged and my jaw dropped in disbelief! Could I ever hope(!) to see such wonders?”
All this, of course, by way of a fanfare for perhaps the most anticipated part of our recent sojourn in the Rocky Mountains; our train journey from Jasper to Vancouver.
Here be pictures. Enjoy!
This is the Canadian National station at Jasper:
These sights may be seen from the train: Mount Robson – the highest peak in the Rockies
Pyramid Creek Falls – in the Pyramid Creek Falls Provincial Park
A brief break in Blue River to stretch our legs:
