An experiment in video

A brief introduction to Vancouver

It took me a while to pin down what felt so odd about Vancouver for the first day or so, but I think I’ve worked it out- it was everything being built on a grid. Somehow that made it feel not really like a proper city for a while. An entirely unfair impression, but interesting that my gut assessment of what constituted a ‘proper’ city was so closely related to age and winding-ness of streets. The atmosphere seemingly saturated with cannabis smoke and a faint air of greasiness didn’t really help, but once again in fairness to Vancouver, I think the greasiness was as much to do with the state that I was in after the long journey.

I’ll go into more detail on some of the more interesting parts of Vancouver later, and just do an overview of the city for now.

One of the first things I did in Vancouver was to get comprehensively lost. Quite a feat in such an orderly city- I blame the jetlag and every street looking roughly the same for the first 48 hours or so. Which was also probably thanks to the jetlag. Either that or it took a while to adjust to the ambient fog of cannabis smoke. In any case, it lead directly to this rather lovely view:

Being the curious sort of chap that I am, I wandered down to the water's edge and was rewarded with an even more impressive panorama:

If I've worked it out right, this was the view from Coal Harbour Park. And just around the corner from that, I found a lovely little spot called Portal Park.

I've always had a fondness for these urban follies, or whatever else you may choose to call them, so this find was a particular treat for me. An interesting little spot- constructed above the north entrance to the Canadian Pacific Railway tunnel to mark a handover agreement between the CPR, B.C Transit and the city of Vancouver regarding the ownership of the tunnel. It also has a surprising cinematic pedigree, having been used in Arrow, The Flash, and iZombie, among others.

Stay tuned for more on the rest (well, more) of Vancouver!

And off we go!

Alright, let’s get this started! I’ve been in Canada for just over a week, but have only just arrived where I will be spending the first 6 months or so- the delightful little mountain town of Jasper, right in the heart of the Rockies. I’ll probably just be finding my feet here for a week or two, so I’ll work through the journey and the time I spent in Vancouver. Everything should sync up eventually.

So, to keep it simple for starters, the flight! Heathrow to Vancouver via Reykjavik.

Image courtesy of www.gcmap.com

Sadly, no time during changeover to see much of Iceland, but the views I had on the flights over were absolutely beautiful. The long, shallow black beaches of volcanic basalt sand were hypnotically tranquil, as were the slow waves that rolled in on them.

Flying on from Iceland, it was fascinating to watch the sea shift from dark slate grey, flecked with floating ice, as it slowly froze over. Then, as we reached the coast of Greenland, and the sea ice gave way to the peaks of islands, rising and merging to form a coastline, then mountains, which in turn were subsumed under snow. How well the impressions I had of the land from the air matched up with the reality of the geography I’m not sure, but it looked absolutely stunning.

The process then reversed on the other coast, peaks emerging from what looked like a great plain of snow, then sinking down beneath sea ice that stretched through to the other coast, broken in places by narrow bands of dark sea, or swirled into strange peaks and spirals.

The flight over Canada mostly crossed a region called Nunavut (pronounced as none-of-it, apparently, since that’s what’s there (actually a transcription of the native name for the area,)), and having flown over a fair portion of it, I can vouch for the fact that what we passed over at least was overwhelmingly nothing but rock and snow. There weren’t even any trees for the first hour or so. Eventually, we dropped below the treeline and in to the Rockies, and indeed negligible sign of human habitation until we arrived in Vancouver.

I haven’t quite pinned down why exactly, but I also haven’t had all that much time to think about it, but I found the landscape of Nunavut to be deeply compelling. I haven’t wanted to go exploring somewhere more since the jungles of Cambodia. Something to do with the fantastically bleak starkness and bleakness of it all, I think. I doubt that I will make it out there this trip, but we shall see. I will certainly take the opportunity should it arise.

Vancouver from the air

Vancouver airport welcoming comittee