travels of a wandering canadian

vancouver and the islands

vancouver was my next stop on the canadian leg of the trip. i arrive tuesday 2 weeks ago and have really enjoyed my time here. the next day i went to the vancouver art gallery and saw an exhibition about haida art (from the tribe that lives on the queen charlotte islands) called raven travelling. it had stuff from the last 200 yrs with some more recent sculptures done by the grand kids and great grand kids of the artists from the 1800's. there was another exhibition with the theme of native art done by either ppl with european backgrounds like emily carr or by natives such as bill reid (he's the guy with the sculptures on the 20$ bill). it was really interesting to see. in the evening, with my mom's cousin and his wife, i headed to mayne island, one of the islands off of vancouver island. they have a cottage there so it was a good excuse to go out there. the place was beautiful and there were a lot of deer in the area. i managed to get a decent one of a fawn who had just been eating the leaves from the blackberry bushes.
















on thursday, we came back to vancouver by ferry and i ran into a reccent graduate from the mcgill chem department! she happened to have grown up on the island that the ferry had just stopped at. it's crazy that you can be across the country in a ferry going to what you would think is the middle of nowhere and there is someone you know. the next day i visited ubc. the campus is absolutely gorgeous. and then took a walk along the sea wall to stanley park. on the way i got my photo taken with a fiber glass bear (there are so many of them around town!).


















and then enjoyed some beer with a local (well a recent arrival to town)





it was so much fun to catch up on the recent news about montreal and the chem department. and of course the gossip.











the next day i headed out with the cousin's daughter to tour vancouver. we saw the capilano suspension bridge, lynn canyon, deep cove, and then went to see an alouettes-bc lions football game. it was weird to be the only on cheering for the alouettes and unfortunately they lost :( but the good thing about the game other than actually seeing a game this year was that they were handing out vouchers for the bc ferries for a free trip. that came in handy a few days later.
lynn canyon is much more wild and natural and dangerous than capilano suspension bridge. they both have a suspension bridge and a stream. but lynn canyon is dangerous! there is a huge sign warning ppl about all the different ways that ppl have died there in the last 30 yrs. one was a hiker who lost his footing and drowned and because of the force of the current, he had to be removed by rescuers using pullies and rope 5 days after he had fallen in. the guy had been drinking...

posted by madeleine @ 12:26 AM