After spending a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend at the Northern Exposure Conference in Wells, my family and I were off to the West Coast for a week.
It has been more than a year since we last left Prince George for the Lower Mainland and I truly felt like a country bumpkin this time. We had an appointment early in the week in downtown Vancouver so we made our way to Stanley Park to kill some time before the appointment in the late afternoon.
It was absolutely beautiful. We watched a flock of Canada geese, we looked at the totem poles, and walked along the beach. My husband and I were trying to get the kids to truly enjoy their beach experience so we hunted for seashells and watched the wildlife.
Our son was more interested in the barnacles on the rocks than the seashells so we spent a good chunk of time crouched on the rocks looking at the little creatures. We saw a heron and some absolutely massive seagulls.
Seeing seagulls for the first time, our daughter, age two, screamed at the top of her lungs, "It's a chicken!" She then promptly put a seashell in her mouth.
After successfully panicking and removing the mussel shell, my husband and I decided that we'd drive to Granville Island for lunch.
When we are driving in the Lower Mainland, my husband drives because he is from Surrey and has a better chance than I do of finding where we need to go. He is also less likely to panic when confronted with a massive traffic snarl or other drivers not letting you into the exit ramp where you need to go.
So, with William driving and me navigating, we attempted to drive to Granville Island. If you are in the role of navigator, it is helpful if you know which direction you are facing and what direction you need to be. I am from Prince George. I have never used compass directions to maneuver around town. So when your loved one is telling you in a loud-ish voice, "We need to go east!"that means nothing to me. I need to know, left or right on the map.
I can figure it out eventually by doing the Never Eat Shredded Wheat mnemonic device but that takes too long when Vancouver people are being pushy behind you.We made it to Granville Island eventually and found that we were on the same tour schedule as at least three separate groups of people that we saw at Stanley Park.
Granville Island is so much bigger and busier than I remember.
It's also significantly more stressful when you have two children with a tendency to run away. After a quick lunch, we got back in the minivan and drove back downtown to our appointment and ended up travelling up all of East Hastings where the people who live there were having a sidewalk sale of stolen merchandise. I try not to judge by assuming the products were stolen but I find it hard to believe that the dude with eight Turbotax boxes came by them honestly.
The sheer volume of people on the street was shocking. People were sleeping on the street, fighting and laughing and many were obviously impaired or mentally ill.
Emaciated women with bony arms and legs were walking around looking for a hit. There was one woman I saw that I couldn't even understand how she was upright her legs were so thin. It was sad and interesting and so very different from my life in Prince George. And it was also very clearly its own community.
People were laughing and joking around and you could tell that there was a sense of belonging on this street filled with pain, addiction and poverty. A brief tip for the intrepid traveller on East Hastings: if you look down the dark alleyways, you will see odd things.
At the end of it all, we made it to our appointment and successfully made our way out of Vancouver again with two very tired kids who fell asleep in the van.
We will be glad to come home.
