After my spectacular entrance into Canada, my (sadly way too short) stay in Vancouver brought again the opportunity to see some old friends and to discover something new.
I had not seen my old colleague and friend Karim in a few years, since he left the domain industry and stopped travelling around the world with the rest of the circus.
Word on the street was that he had opened a cafè on Granville Island, which was easy enough to track down. So on Friday morning I headed down there, ordered a breakfast burrito and patiently started my stakeout. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long before he showed up. At first he did not notice me, but I quickly snuck up on him and yelled “Surprise!” 🙂
Catching up with Karim was great, and I am happy I also got a chance to meet his lovely family for dinner last night.
The stop in Vancouver gave me also the chance to spend some quality eating (sampling some great local fish) with my friends Robbie (who had helped me track down Karim), Leona and Tony, before rounding off the evening with a couple of drinks with Vern (another unplanned meetup courtesy of a well-timed FB check-in 🙂 ).
In terms of sightseeing, my short time in Vancouver has been mostly focused on learning more about the art and culture of the First Nations (which is the name used in Canada to refer to the aboriginal population that originally occupied the area that today includes British Columbia, Washington State and South-East Alaska), something that has fascinated me since my first visit to the Seattle Art Museum a year ago.
The First Nations were all groups with very different languages and traditions, something reflected also in their peculiar artistic styles. In spite of being subject to a long period of oppression and the attempts of forced assimilation imposed first by the British and then the Canadian Government, these incredibly rich cultures managed somehow to survive and have been blossoming again in the last few decades.
The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia is an excellent place to start, with its large collection of totem poles, masks and other artefacts both from older settlements as well as more modern artists like Bill Reid.
My visit here was made even more interesting by the excellent guided tour given by Martin, a volunteer at the museum who moved to Canada from Belfast in the 70s (and still has the occasional hint of an Irish accent 🙂 ).
The tour was a very nice experience and offered a lot of great information on things like the real function of totem poles, which were often placed outside the clan house of the most important village leaders with a function similar to a coat of arms would have had for a European aristocratic family, and were thus not the objects of worship the first missionaries mistook them for. A big section of the museum is also dedicated to the beautiful ritual masks typical of these areas and their role in supporting the story-telling that is the base of the oral tradition of the aboriginal cultures of these regions.
On the same note, I was very happy to catch (on its last day 🙂 ) an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery covering the production of an artist called Susan Point. She has developed a very personal style interpreting the traditional motifs and mythological themes of her native Musqueam/Coast Salish aboriginal group, such as the representation of animals like ravens, bears, salmon and frogs and the reference to the number 4 (a magic number associated with the cycles of life, like the seasons or the cardinal points). A recurring element in her production is the round spindle whorl that Coast Salish women traditionally used to weave wool, and that she has reinterpreted also through the use of new, non-traditional materials (such as glass) and more modern patterns.
Another highlight of the Art Gallery was the permanent exhibition covering the works of Emily Carr, one of Canada’s most famous modern artists. Her fascination with the beauty of the coastal forest landscape of the Pacific Northwest reminded me a bit of Georgia O’Keeffe’s obsession with the New Mexican landscape, and just like O’Keeffe she managed to capture the essence of this landscape so vividly and vibrantly in her paintings.
Vancouver has definitely been a great place to visit and a worthy last stop on this journey. From a purely statistical standpoint, I also think it is worth mentioning that this city seems to have the highest percentage of pretty girls of all the places I have visited throughout this month across America 🙂 .
I was just a bit sorry not to have more time also to get out and explore the incredible nature that surrounds it. A quick stroll around Stanley Park and getting a glimpse of the seals swimming so close to the shore right in the middle of the city gave me however a quick taste of how amazing this place can be.
Earlier this week, the Uber driver who was bringing me to the Seaplanes terminal in Seattle (and whose “summer job” is to cook on the fishing boats that sail around Alaska 🙂 ) talked very warmly about the incredible nature of the Pacific Northwest, and I think after my brief experience up here I really feel the urge to come back very soon and head further North into the wild.
