A small format camera is the photographer’s sketchbook, the place where ideas can be quickly explored before paint is applied to that big, forever canvas of the final print. Over two decades, my coterie of Nikon cameras and lenses ably served as my sketchbooks.
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A Remembrance Day Walk
For Gail and me, Remembrance Day in Winnipeg always includes a walk down Valour Road for a service at a small park on Sargent Avenue.
This year, I am in North Vancouver, on my way to their Remembrance Day service. It’s a one-hour walk to Victoria Park, an eastward trek that leapfrogs suburban neighbourhoods and the Trans-Canada Highway and follows the banks of south-flowing streams. Continue reading
Walking the Water in North Vancouver: Baden-Powell
In this snowless domestic landscape, Christmas lights glow, framing the distant mass of Grouse Mountain. Green, treed slopes rise above the roofs until capped by a dusting of snow. It’s one of those rare straight lines drawn by nature, separating a ribbon of temperate green from a broad band of white above. As I start today’s walk, looking up at the mountain, I can imagine that line as roughly demarcating today’s walk on the Baden-Powell trail as it traverses the mountain. Continue reading
Walking the Water in North Vancouver: The Green Necklace
The urban overlay of North Vancouver, the city, can come across as an amorphous mass without any sense of centre. Industry and commerce line the harbour front in a continuous stream of innocuous buildings. Inland is the repetitive grid of streets, for the most part small-scale residential houses with the occasional high rise apartment punching through the low slung skyline.
In the middle of that domestic streetscape, there is something interesting. A little jewel of a town plan first dreamt up in 1907. It’s called the Green Necklace, a fitting moniker for a string of parks that wraps itself around the neck of a modest city centre. Continue reading
Walking the Water in North Vancouver: Mosquito Creek
If I were to choose a time to walk in the woods, this would not be it. But here I am, walking along Mosquito Creek, engulfed in the deep, dark shadows of a long winter night, straining to see two steps ahead through a hard rain.
Walking the Water in North Vancouver: Capilano
If you look at a map of North Vancouver, three geographical elements appear to define its character: the mountains that line its northern edge, Vancouver Harbour to the south and, in between these two natural barriers, Highway One as it rips through on its transcontinental journey across Canada. All are east-west lines, effectively squeezing the district into a long, narrow box.
The walker sees North Vancouver differently, from a perspective only available to those on foot. The walker sees the city as a network of paths following the course of rivers and streams as they run north-to-south down the slope of North Vancouver. Shoelaces that naturally tie together mountain and sea. Forces of nature cutting across the otherwise impenetrable barrier of The Highway and breaking down the organized grid of streets.
What follows is a remapping of North Vancouver based on several walks that trace the north-south flow of its waterways.
The Capilano River is a good place to start. Continue reading
The Christmas Train: Day Three
Time on the Canadian is immaterial. Its measurement is by breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleeping, watching the world pass by from the observation deck. “What day is this?” is a common refrain. Continue reading
A Dog Goes West: Part Three
It is a slow but beautiful road winding its way from Kelowna south down Highway 33 and then east along Highway 3. Styxx reclines in his lair – pretty much the entire rear compartment of our Prius. Occasionally he takes a look out the side or rear windows to examine the endless forests occasionally punctuated with the jagged grey peaks of mountains in the distance. Along the way, we stop at wayside pullouts to stretch, to have a picnic lunch or to take a close look at some stream with clear cool water noisily rushing over a bed of river-smoothed rocks. Continue reading
A Dog Goes West: Part Two
Styxx has settled into his new life as tourist. And we have settled into our roles as dog tour guides. We set aside our usual travel routine of long hikes, eating in fine restaurants, going anywhere we want. Now we search for dog-friendly activities and venues, not wanting to leave Styxx alone for even a minute.
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