Field Trip City

Today was the first day I've been able to walk around outside without a coat in months.

To begin at the beginning: I caught the 44 bus to UBC, which is a bit of a haul from downtown Vancouver. On the bus I listened to people talk about this and that. It was strange hearing Seattle come up in conversations as a location to travel to like Toronto or Montreal. When I got to the UBC campus there was a huge party happening outdoors. Booths were setup, games were being played. There was also a stage set up for a show that was happening in the evening, and Stars came on to soundcheck a few songs. I walked around a bit and took some pictures. I was having a coffee when two people, one dressed like a penis and one like a vagina, passed by giving out free condoms. Then two MORE people passed, one dressed up like Pac-man and the other like a ghost, chasing each other.

Unfortunately I couldn't catch up with them afterwards as I had an interview to attend to. Gisele Baxter and I talked for over half an hour about Coupland, Canadian literature, Gothic literature, modern technology, and the future of the novel. She was excited to talk and I got some great material from her that should help out with my Biography paper. After the interview I walked around campus for a bit before I hopped a bus back downtown.

After dropping some stuff back at the hostel, I went for a stroll up Bute Street to the harbour and took loads of pictures. Vancouver is beautiful. Even downtown has tranquil and removed sections that appear out of nowhere. Its sidestreets travel either down or uphill, providing vistas to horizons that beg to be discovered. There are flowers EVERYWHERE. Heading north leads to a sublime view of the North Shore mountains and the cargo ships and seaplanes coming and going from the city. I walked back and had dinner at a nearby restaurant called Characters, which was a tad expensive but serves a ton of food for the price. I ate chicken souvlaki while also devouring Coupland's book on Terry Fox. I swung by a 7-11 for some chocolate and returned to the hostel exhausted, finishing the book and passing out at the late hour of 9 PM (12 AM EST).

This morning I woke up and had breakfast with Heidi at a Denny's two blocks away. She was in town for a job interview which apparently went very well. We talked for an hour or so over breakfast and parted ways. I decided to visit the Museum of Anthropology, which meant that I had to return to the UBC campus. I caught the 4 because the 44 doesn't run on the weekend. Once I was on campus I asked the bus driver for some directions, and he told me that I was lucky I was asking him because he bikes around the area just to provide answers to questions like mine. He also told me to walk AROUND the museum before I enter to check out the carvings. A man sitting on a bench by the bus door corroborated the advice, so off I went.

It was a gorgeous day with the sun full in the sky. Campus was alive and beautiful, with rows of cherry blossom trees adorning the occasional sidewalk. I've never breathed air like there is here; when you breathe, you breathe air that's coming down out of the mountains, in from the sea, and filtered through the city's greenery.

The view around the museum was fantastic, with mountain ranges stretching along the coast. The carvings turned out to be a recreation, in part by 20th century Haida artist Bill Reid, of a Haida mausoleum and burial ground with enormous totem poles and door/wall posts. The museum contained more of the like plus drawers and drawers full of artifacts from countries all over the world. I found out what Haida, Salish, Tsimshian, and Kwakiutl totem poles signify: the creatures carved into them are characters from the stories produced by the family who displays them. Only the family has the license to tell their own stories and impart their significance. Totem poles are indications of identity and place.

I left the museum and bussed back downtown to take off for Stanley Park. My intention was to cut the park into an 'S' shape, making my way up to Lions Gate Bridge. I had a bit of trouble finding a path that cut through the causeway and had to double back, but I'm glad I did, because it gave me an opportunity to see Beaver Lake. It was peaceful, covered with water lilies and silence. A group of young people sat nearby listening to their friend play guitar.

I continued towards a destination I'd been looking forward to seeing - the hollowed-out tree. Coupland has a story about how his car was stolen by teenagers and parked in the tree while he was out of town. His mother phoned him and asked him if he did it as an artistic gesture. Approaching it I noticed it had been surround by 7-foot-high blue fencing, so access to it directly was impossible. As I was taking it in a car pulled up and an older woman and middle aged man got out. She wanted a picture of the tree. We both got pictures by snapping them over the fence. I took two before my camera battery died. As they were leaving I overhead the man say that the city is tearing it down. I asked him why, and he said it was becoming a safety hazard - the top of the tree was visibly held in place by cables and slats. The tree was just too old to keep acting as a tourist attraction. I said it was too bad, and he said, "Yeah. Time takes everything away eventually." I wrote those words down on my map. A limousine pulled up and some kids dressed for a formal got out. They had wanted their pictures taken with the tree. The driver snapped them lined up with their backs to the fence, and everyone climbed back in the car and took off.

I decided I'd better call it a day as I was getting tired and the sun was starting to go down. I had one more point of interest - cherry popsicles. In his entry on Stanley Park, Coupland talks about how nice it is to walk the perimeter and grab a cherry popsicle at Lost Lagoon when all is said and done. I found a sign pointing the way. I walked through the forest, running into only the occasional person. At the end of a trail called Lovers Walk I found a view with an infinite expanse of water like the one I'd seen on Long Island five years ago, where the sea and the sky meet almost indiscernably.

I found a concession stand, ordered a cherry popsicle, and went to sit at Ferguson Point. When I was eating a plane flew by with a marriage proposal on a banner attached. I watched people playing on the beach far down below and tried to figure out which of the houses on the North Shore belonged to Coupland. Satisfied, I kept walking down the western coastline of the park. The number of people grew the closer I got to the downtown area. People sat on the beach and on massive stones on the shoreline and walked their dogs and biked and rollerbladed. All in front of an astounding view. I've never seen anything quite like it.

My last point of the day: breaking my refusal to eat fish. Sushi seems to be the meal of choice in this town because it comes in so fresh. I looked up some restaurants in the area and settled on Urban Sushi at Hornby and Dunsmuir. When I got to the restaurant it was closed, so I wandered around looking for a substitute. I finally chose Tsunami Sushi on Robson. They sat me at a bar in front of a little river on which boats of food passed by. You could take stuff at will, but since I've only eaten sushi twice in my life before I ordered off the menu with a list of food Coupland recommended in City of Glass and ate while reading Life After God. Reading Coupland in this city makes me feel like a total tourist. It was all delicious. I had to spy on the people next to me to figure out how to mix the wasabi and soy sauce, and my first attempt made my eyeballs pop out, but I got the hang of it.

I've spent a fair bit of money on meals, but it's been worth it. I mean, my diet typically consists of cereal, soup and bread, so it's nice to eat differently for a change. Tomorrow I'm heading north through Stanley Park and over the Lions Gate Bridge to North Van. I have one more attraction in particular that I want to check out: the Staples at which Coupland set his last novel. From there it's interview time.

I have a lot to talk with him about. More than I thought, given the experiences I've had in the last couple of days. I'm back at the hostel now and as exhausted as I was yesterday, if not more so. Time to hit the sack.