Vancouver present and past

Instead of a 12-hour door-to-door trip from Sointula to New York City, my return turned out to be a 48-hour one, thanks to the always late Pacific Coastal airline. Missing my connecting flight Thursday, I had to overnight in Vancouver, before finally arriving yesterday morning at 7 a.m. at JFK. Vancouver is a lovely city, however, and the weather was beautiful. I was able to do something I had wanted to do since my first visit to that city in 2014. At that time, I stayed at the Buchan Hotel, and from my window could be seen the so-called English Beach. On that warm August day, tons of people were out on the beach or in the water. My visit that time did not allow a beach visit, but after checking in on Thursday afternoon at the Rosedale on Robson Suite Hotel (highly recommended) in downtown Vancouver, I undertook a long walk along the Seawall, heading for English Beach. It was farther than I imagined, but half-way there, just past the Granville Bridge, was the Sunset Beach, complete with life guard, so I stopped and enjoyed a brisk swim. How lovely it was!

View from my hotel room

Despite all the glass-fronted high rises and the continuing building activity, Vancouver seems at such moments the most livable of cities, with the Seawall being one of the attractions of modern urban life. Mid-afternoon, and tons of folks were out biking, skating, running, sitting in cafes and enjoying the amenities of advanced Western civilization. Adding to the attractiveness is the city's location and its small "footprint" within a mountain surround.

Outside the Vancouver Art Gallery

I did a lot of walking. Among the places I visited was the Vancouver Art Gallery. The featured exhibition was entitled "Claude Monet: Secret Garden," with thirty-eight paintings from the Musée Marmottan Monet, including many from Monet's Giverny period.

 
More interesting to me was the exhibit "Pictures from Here," with its representations of Vancouver and surrounds, especially the early photographs of Vancouver-based Fred Herzog. One gets a very different picture of Vancouver from these early photographs. Clearly the Vancouver Expo led to the changing face of the city.

Fred Herzog, Hastings & Columbia St., 1958

One critic of Vancouver's gentrification is Henri Robideau, whose works are "narrative collages" combining photos and hand-written texts. Oppenheimer Park Homeless Summer 2014, for instance, includes photos of an encampment of what Robideau calls the "dispossessed." The focus of the protests that summer concerned, among other things, gentrification. It is an irony of places like Vancouver that, in becoming so attractive to people with money, these places also attract others who do not generate money themselves.

Henri Robideau, Homeless Summer 2014

One very impressive artist was Evan Lee, whose works draw on real images of the kinds of forest fires that ravaged parts of British Columbia this summer. After downloading the aerial views from the internet, Lee manipulated the pigments produced from ink jet printing, creating new shapes and blurring outlines, and setting the whole thing with an acrylic medium.

Evan Lee, British Columbia forest fire

And, finally, an image of a family gathering that stands in interesting contrast to the photo above by Fred Herzog.

Fred Herzog, Family on the Lawn, 1959

Nowadays, families gather, but no longer pass the time talking; solitary activity is preferred. The photo was taken in the departure lounge of the Vancouver Airport, as I waited to board my 10:50 p.m. flight to New York. As always, click on images to enlarge.