The Birds and the B's

What a beautiful ending to a glorious first day of 2020 in Vancouver!  Westcoast sunsets are spectacular!  The intensity of the coral pink in the evening sky took my breath away.  The sunset reflecting on the water was almost supernatural.  It truly is as the tourism slogan says, "Super.  Natural.  British Columbia."

Earlier in the day, I took a long walk along Vancouver's False Creek seawall, celebrating the new year, and the new decade.  The difficult teen years are over, and we're in the twenties now.  There's promise in the air!

The birds and b's were everywhere!  Bicycles, backpacks, benches, boats - all the b's jostling for space along the seawall. 

There were black birds in bare branches.  Seagulls bobbing in the deep blue water, made room for more gulls swooping down to join them.  The seagulls calling from the water's edge, could barely be heard over the throaty caws of the black crows in the tree branches overhead.  An artist has created folk art birdhouses.

 

So much for birds, let's talk about the b's.  B is for bike paths.  One quickly learns that the seawall is divided into two paths.  One side of the painted white line is for pedestrians, the other, for bicyclists.  Boys with backpacks, and mothers with baby buggies, kept to their side of the walkway, to allow couples on bicycles to pedal past on the other side of the dividing line.  Even as the afternoon crowd grew larger, the dividing line was never crossed.

As I walked along the path, I overheard pieces of conversations, and observed the little vignettes of life.  A young mother, carrying her toddler spread-eagle across her hip, ran down an embankment laughing as she cried, "fly like a bird!"  The little one raised her arms, as if to soar.  A bride-to-be and her friend were discussing the merits of her fiancees guest list, which to her relief, included most of their mutual friends.  An elderly Asian man squinted in the sunlight to see the dragon boats his son was pointing out to him.   

B is for buildings.  The False Creek of my childhood was an industrial area, often shrouded in thick fog.  From the Cambie Bridge, one could still see Sweeney's Cooperage, an old barrel making business, long since replaced by condos and parkettes.  Expo '86 and years later, the 2010 Winter Olympics changed the landscape of False Creek.  Prior to 1986, only the far West side of the water was developed.  Afterwards, development spread Eastward to where Science World, and the Olympic Village condos are located.  There's new development along the entire stretch of False Creek.

B is for boats.  I have a thing for boats.  Big yachts, little tug boats, sailboats, dragonboats, the Aquabus which takes people over the Granville Island Public Market and the West End - I could watch them for hours!  The freighters and cruise ships can't get into the creek, so they stay further West in English Bay, or on the other side of the city, in Burrard Inlet.

B is for beautiful beginning to the new year, and the new decade. 


Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.
 

Moving Heaven and Earth

It's heaven on earth...and I moved heaven and earth to get here!  After nearly three decades of living in Eastern Canada, I arrived in my hometown of Vancouver on a rainy Sunday morning.  The city is beautiful in the rain, and spectacular when the clouds lift, to reveal the majestic mountains.  I cry tears of joy every day, just taking in the splendor of this city by the sea.  I am blessed!

Nearly thirty years of yearning to be back on the Westcoast, did not get me here.  I've learned from very caring friends, that yearning and desire won't move heaven and earth the way declared intention and action will.  It's not enough to talk about it, you need to do something about it, and set a "by when" date.  

I left most of the furniture back in Toronto, bringing only those things which meant the most to me. Unpacking the Remington bronze statues, Indigenous art, my small collection of Madonnas, a silver tea set, and two sets of china, was exciting and nerve wracking.  I worried about breakage.  The contents of one box - a crystal water pitcher, my favourite handpainted blue serving bowl, a teacup and a saucer were completely destroyed.  While I was heartsick, they were things, not people.  Things can be replaced.  

Many of my friends have wished me well in this new chapter in my life.  I had a realization that, my return to Vancouver is more than a new chapter in my life, it is a new book - a sequel to all that has come before - and I am writing it! 

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

Home

The Westcoast of Canada is more beautiful than I remembered!  After nearly three decades in Quebec, and Ontario, coming home to Vancouver and Vancouver Island, was a gift to my heart and soul.  The photograph above, was taken atop Burnaby Mountain, about a mile and a half from where I grew up, and near the terminus of the controversial oil pipeline expansion. The mountains and sea are part of me...an eternal part of me. 

I arrived in mid-July, long before the smoke from wildfires blanketed the coast.  What I noticed immediately, was the air.  The air is fresh.  It has a lightness of being, even on a hot Summer day.  Walking along the seashore, or standing on a pier, the smell of the salt air and creosote-soaked timbers, brings back memories of my youth and childhood.  'Twas as if I'd never been away.

But, I had been.  I hugged old friends I hadn't seen in thirty, thirty-five, even forty-five years:  soulful, deep hugs, to make up for the lost decades.  Lifetimes have passed.  New generations have grown up to have children of their own.  Yet, we picked up our conversations as if we had just seen each other the day before.  It felt so good to be with each of them once more: women I went to highschool with, co-workers from my days in broadcasting, old friends and new friends.  Sometimes we'd talk late into the night, and other times, just enjoyed the quiet.  It's great to be around someone you can just sit with, without having to say anything.  I already miss them all so much, and can't wait to return...home.

The Westcoast is often referred to as the, "wet coast", due to the abundance of rain throughout the year.  During my three weeks there, there were blue skies and sunshine almost every day, so I had a clear view of the mountains.  The Sleeping Giant, is the Indigenous name for the mountain formation created by the outline of Grouse Mountain, Mount Seymour, and other mountains on the North Shore.  She really does look like a giant, on her back, in a deep sleep. I say, "she" because she's also known as the Sleeping Princess, and Sleeping Beauty.

Sailboats and freighters have long shared the waters of English Bay...even making way for kayaks.  The vessel in the foreground carries a bright red sign, protesting the expansion of the oil pipeline, and tanker traffic that will pass through these waters, en route to the Salish Sea.   These beaches are ground zero for environmental activism...Greenpeace was born here.  

Everyone told me that the city - indeed, the whole Lower Mainland - had dramatically changed in thirty years.  I didn't recognize my old neighbourhood!  Everything was new to me.  Yet, I felt at home everywhere I went. 

Whole communities of sparkling highrise condos, and office towers, have emerged along the Skytrain light rapid transit routes.  Everyone wants to live in Vancouver!  Housing is a serious issue, and one which everyone talks about.  Vancouver is an expensive city inwhich to live, due in large measure to housing prices.  Many have sold their homes, and moved outside the Lower Mainland.  As a result, housing prices elsewhere in the Province, have also climbed significantly over the years.    

My Great Grandfather was a ship's Captain and Pilot in Portrush, Northern Ireland.  His seafaring youngest son, "abandoned ship", and headed for the gold fields of Northern Ontario, and later took his pregnant bride to the Pacific coast city of Vancouver, British Columbia, where my Dad was born.  Our family roots in Vancouver go back to the early 1920's - which is nothing, compared with the ten thousand year history of  Indigenous people on the Westcoast.

I am Quebecois, and Irish, yet the art of the Westcoast Haida, Nootka, and Coast Salish is part of my culture.  An adopted part of my culture.  I've missed the presence of totems, and carvings.  They are a proud part of the artistic and cultural landscape of British Columbia.  The grand works of art are displayed for all the world to see, in parks, airports, and ferry terminals...where this fellow mirrored a pre-caffinated me, waiting for the really, really, really early morning ferry to Nanaimo's Departure Bay, on Vancouver Island.

Strangely, I've become enamoured with another kind of totem, carved from BC timbers:  the iconic telephone pole!  Though I once considered them industrial eyesores, I've grown to love them.  They're everywhere in Vancouver:  leaning in back alleys (another uniquely Vancouver feature), and along the streets of older neighbourhoods.  My heart leapt when I saw them again!

Blackberries!  I'd forgotten about the wild blackberries growing around those telephone poles, and along roadside ditches and rural fences.  There's nothing as deliciously Summer, as sun-sweetened blackberries...except, maybe crab and prawns fresh off the fishing boats of Steveston!

   

 

The Salish Sea splashes the shores of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, as well as Vancouver on the Mainland of British Columbia.  Fishing trawlers, tugboats, freighters, ferries and sailboats ply its salt waters, anchoring in the open waters, or tying up dockside at a marina.  The vessels are beautiful to photograph, with both graphic angles and sweeping curves - much like the lines in Coast Salish, Nootka and Haida art of the Westcoast.   

If you're thinking of Pete Seeger's '60s folksong, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?... this is after all, a floral photography blog (flowers and photography being my endorphins) - I'm getting there...eventually.   When I wasn't pointing my camera at the sea and mountains, I did take photos of flowers, which I'll share in upcoming blogposts...the Westcoast is the home of Flower Power!

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

    

Saying "Yes" to Living!

After years of saying, "no" to almost every invitation to do anything, I am at last saying, "yes"!  For the first time in years, I have no real responsibilities.  The freedom is exhilerating!  It's as if the skies have opened up, and everything is illuminated by brilliant sunshine!   

I was telling an old friend this weekend, that I feel like a sixteen year old, with the whole world open up to me.  It's all so new to me: undiscovered experiences, and so much to learn!  I don't need a Valedictorian to tell me that the world is mine to discover...I'm already out the door!  

I've been thinking a lot lately, about what I'd really like to do with the next thirty or more years of my life...and where in the world I'd like to be.  Stay in Toronto, where I have many beautiful friends?  It's great to walk into a place, and have everyone call out my name, like Norm on Cheers.  I have meaningful relationships with my TO friends.  They've been there for me, and me for them.  We keep our spirits up, encourage each other, and have formed deep, lasting bonds.  

Maybe, I'll travel the world with my camera, following the Summer season, like a sun worshipping nomadic gypsy?  Or, follow in my Dad's footsteps, and take a luxurious ocean liner across the sea, or set sail for distant shores!  France, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Greece all call my name...my full name...in capital letters...with an exclamation mark!

My heart and soul have always been on the Westcoast of Canada.  My true home is there, where the mountains meet the sea.  I have longed for the coast for nearly three decades.

I love Vancouver, with it's tree lined streets of cherry blossoms - ribbons of pink from February 'til May!  It is a garden city, with flower and vegetable gardens in yards, and on sundecks in every neighbourhood.  The parks are a floral photographer's vision of paradise!  The city's beaches are home to sun worshippers.  The sailboats and floating homes in the city's safe harbours, the seagulls and eagles soaring in the skies above, the world class restaurants, cafes, and farmers' markets, and wonderful places to walk or cycle, all make Vancouver a very liveable city! 

One of my wonderful Brazilian friends, has taught me the joy of  being spontaneous.  We'll be talking about doing something, and he'll say, "Let's go!"  And I'm there!  Just like that!  For a control freak, who plans, and changes plans, and plans again - this is life changing!

I live with three bright, vibrant, engaging twenty-somethings who go out at ten o'clock at night!  That's usually when I'm coming home from an evening out!  Even when I was a twenty something, I was home by midnight.  There's a whole other time zone out there, that I've yet to discover!

Last week, one of my extraordinary neighbours had free tickets to a ballet dress rehearsal with The National Ballet of Canada.  Normally, I would have thought about all the fuss of getting dressed up, and heading downtown, and just stayed home.  This time, I said, "yes"!  I actually had fun getting dressed up!  We attended an eye opening lecture before the performance...and saw three back to back ballets:  Paz de la Jolla, The Man in Black and Cacti.

I loved the tribute to Johnny Cash, in The Man in Black:  an ensemble of four ballet dancers in cowboy boots (honestly!), stomping, "square dancing", and line dancing, to Johnny Cash singing Lennon and McCartney's In My Life, Canadian Ian Tyson's Four Strong Winds, and Torontonian Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind, among other songs.  It was unlike any ballet I had ever seen, and I loved it! 

Paz de La Jolla, created by New York City Ballet Resident Choreographer and board member, Justin Peck, was a day at the beach!  Peck grew up in California, and quickly rose to fame with the New York City Ballet, a company founded by European George Balanchine, who sought to give his company an American "look and feel" with tall, long-legged, athletic ballerinas (I know this, because I attended the pre-performance lecture).

Peck has not strayed from the late founder's vision.  The dancers wore bright, neon Summer swimsuits, and volleyball beachwear, and their movements recreated the spirit of a day in the sun and surf.  As day turned to night, dancers in opalescent, diaphanous costumes moved like moonlight on the crests of waves. This week, the Toronto Star gave the ballet four stars!

This Summer, I too will be walking along sundrenched beaches, and photographing glorious gardens, as I head to the Westcoast for three wonderful weeks of being with old friends and new, doing things I did as a kid, and things I've never done before.  YES!!!!

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.