Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

Vancouver timeline

For the sake of organization:

  • 6 Sept – Arrive in Vancouver at 9:35am PST
  • 8 Sept – Cabin Fever 2 begins
  • 9 Sept – Drew Sexsmith’s birthday
  • 10 Sept – Cabin Fever 2 ends ; Nick Ellan’s birthday
  • 15 Sept – Meet with former profs at UBC
  • 16 Sept – Party in North Vancouver
  • 17 Sept – Petgill Lake hike, following pancake breakfast
  • 20 Sept – Dentist appointment
  • 22 Sept – Hilary McNaughton’s birthday
  • 23 Sept – Depart from Vancouver at 8:55pm PST

List subject to revision and addition. Finding space for these items is particularly important. Also, does anyone know exactly when these parties are to occur?

A coast mountain hike in September

One thing I definitely want to do while in Vancouver is one of the more beautiful mountain hikes. For logistical reasons relating to an excellent potential guest at the party on the 16th, it would be best to do so either that morning (time permitting) or one one of the days before or after.

The four possibilities that stand out to me are:

  1. Crown Mountain: Accessible by climbing Grouse Mountain and continuing onwards, Crown Mountain offers an even better view of both Vancouver and the Coast Mountain range. All told, the hike probably takes about six hours (such as I recall from when I last did it with Sarah Pemberton) and can be a little bit tricky at the top, especially if it is windy. One advantage is that no cars or drivers would be needed to get there.
  2. Petgill Lake: Located beside the sea-to-sky highway up to Whistler, this hike includes both an alpine lake at 750m elevation and a subsequent overlook with a grand view of Howe Sound. It is among my favourite hikes ever. It took about six hours when last I did it with my father.
  3. Stawamus Chief: Climbing the centre and northern peaks of the chief offers two nice views for a reasonable amount of legwork. While a bit crowded and a bit of a drive, the view over that sheer face is an inspiring one. Six hours is a reasonable timescale to climb both, as I recall from when I last did it with Jonathan and my father.
  4. Mount Gardner: A bit of a dwarf compared to some of these others, Gardner has the advantage of being on Bowen Island, which means a nice twenty minute ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay. Because Bowen is between North Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast, the climb affords numerous excellent views of both. It only took about four hours when last I did it with Meghan.

Who is interested in coming along? Also, could those who are please vote for one of the above. Suggesting alternatives is also welcome. My vote is for Petgill Lake, provided transport can be arranged.

PS. My injured camera has been returned, restored to health. Curiously, it seems like they opted to both clean the CCD and replace the lens assembly. That must have been where the leak introducing the dust was located. One nice feature of it being repaired rather than replaced is that the numbering of the photos will not start at zero. If it had, many of the new images would have filenames identical to those already on here. The camera is slightly noisier zooming in and out than it was before, but it seems to be dust-free. The money I had set aside to replace it if necessary has been added to the dSLR fund.

Update: 27 August: The hike is to take place at a sensible time on the morning of the seventeenth (the day after the big party in North Van). The destination remains undecided.

Cabin Fever 2 correction

Due to a scheduling error, it was previously announced that the retreat would be taking place from September 10th to 12th. In fact, it was meant to take place during the weekend before that: from Friday, September 8th to Sunday, September 10th. Please revise your schedules.

I really hope the change doesn’t cause problems for anyone. For those who are working, going on the weekend is clearly preferable. For those, like me, who are not, it doesn’t matter enormously much. That said, it is not quite ideal that I will be vanishing for three days within 48 hours of returning to Vancouver.

PS. Tristan has a post about this, also.

Even in the age of the CCD, there’s a tender place in my heart for film

From a nice hostel in Galway, let me write for a moment about film before I head off to find some dinner. People in Canadian cities that include a Lens & Shutter location (just Vancouver and Victoria, I think) should feel rather lucky, as they stock my two favourite films at excellent prices. While Kodak High Definition 400 is simply unavailable in the British Isles, their black and white T-Max 100 and 400 films are only available here for about ten Euros a roll, plus the unusually high cost of processing an ‘unusual’ emulsion.

If you’ve never given much thought to the kind of film you use or where you get it processed, you might find it worthwhile to spend less than $10 on a roll of one of the films mentioned above. For that price, at Lens & Shutter, you also get processing and either a CD of scanned images or a set of 4×6″ prints. All my photos from Europe in 2004 were shot on one or the other kind of film, and I am clearly fond enough of them that I have been hunting for somewhere that stocks them since I arrived here. I had my mother bring a batch of each for the Malta trip (though many of those photos were taken on my point and shoot digital camera).

Perhaps next year I should join some kind of photo club in Oxford and start doing my own developing and printing. The danger, of course, is darkroom hypnosis; once, when I was in tenth grade, I found myself leaving the Handsworth darkroom after 2:00am, not realizing at all how much time had passed since I wandered in after a quick dinner of Coke and Gobstoppers.

I suspect I will do better than that in Galway tonight.

Friday night Dublin

Atrium of the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin

I set out tonight in search of social Dublin and – while I am drenched to the bone – there can be no denying that I found it. Through the drizzle, I made my way to Trinity College. There, I introduced myself to one person and began to spread virally as “Milan from Canada.” Every twenty minutes or so, it seemed that whoever I had been speaking to would introduce me to someone else. Between that and speaking with people beside me who were part of the same group as the person to whom I was introduced, I was very rapidly integrated.

Once the student bar at Trinity closed, I followed a group of Spanish drummers and pipers whose jaunty tune was quite at odds with the downpour. While doing so, I met a quartet of Dubliners who seem to overflow with goodwill towards Canada (actually, the sentiment was quite omnipresent among those with whom I spoke). After teaching one young woman the French version of the anthem, I ended up with them and still further friends at a place called Doyle’s. I wasn’t quite up to the 2:30am closing time there, so I tried to take advantage of a gap in the rain to get back to my hostel. Thirty metres away, a cab managed to hit a puddle in such a way that I got drenched from head to toe in pure Hollywood fashion.

Despite such minor foibles, it has been an excellent few hours. My ability to pick a person’s words from loud background noise has always been far below average, so chances are I didn’t hear anyone’s name properly. Even so, I direct my sincerest thanks outwards to all those anonymous Dubliners (and Spaniards) who made this rainy night so social and interesting.

I love Vancouver

Things I can’t wait to get in Vancouver:

  1. All you can eat sushi
  2. A cheap(er) 1GB stick of RAM for my iBook
  3. Cobb’s bakery Twisted Delight
  4. Dental care from someone I trust
  5. Galleria sandwich
  6. Coffee made with Vancouver water
  7. Naan vegetarian poutine, with miso gravy
  8. Delicious veggie curry, as made by my mother
  9. Cheap Bic four-colour pens, to bolster my supply
  10. Delicious peanut-sauce-saturated food from Tropika
  11. Chilled sake at Hapa Izakaya
  12. Tasty soup at Kintaro
  13. Mountains to the north!
  14. Additional sushi at Honjin
  15. Photographic banter at Lens and Shutter
  16. At least one dose of Curry Point curry. I still have my frequent customer card (half full).
  17. Food, wine, and conversation generously granted to myself from the benevolent Ellan family
  18. The view from the Lions Gate Bridge
  19. The view from the northern end of Canada Place, at night
  20. The view from atop Crown Mountain
  21. 99 cent pizza, downtown
  22. Welts in my head from low-ceilinged Kitsilano basement suits
  23. Episodes of 24 watched on Jonathan’s basement couch
  24. Pure liquid funkiness: Commercial Drive
  25. Granville Island Winter Ale
  26. Thesis related books at Canadian prices
  27. Proper, West Coast rain
  28. A copy of The Georgia Strait to read on the bus
  29. Competant barristas at Starbucks
  30. More clothing and gear from Mountain Equipment Co-op

That is more or less the lot. Or did I forget something?

Vancouver music in September

One thing I would like to do while in Vancouver is see a concert by one of the city’s more distinctive musical acts: someone like Tegan and Sara, the Vincent Black Shadow, Melissa Ferrick, or Spirit of the West.

Does anybody know of such a concert between September 6th and 23rd, excluding the dates between the 10th and the 12th, when I will probably be taking part in Cabin Fever 2?

Also, would any Vancouver friends be interested in attending such a concert en masse?

Cabin Fever Redux

Mathias at the first Cabin Fever

I don’t know who took this photo, but it is probably my favourite from the original Cabin Fever retreat, in the summer of 2005. Organized by Tristan, those 5 days were probably the best of that summer. Most fortuitously, he is planning a redux, to take place during the time when I will be in Vancouver. If enough of the friends who I really want to see are going along for the three days (September 10-12) I shall make a point of doing so. Surely nobody who went the first time can deny the appeal of a repetition?

I very much hope the thing will come together. To devote three of my eighteen days in Canada to such a venture seems most worthwhile, provided people who I really care about choose to come along.

A $500 bet

Let it be noted that the following bet has been placed, for a value of 500 Canadian dollars, at their present value:

I say that in August of 2036, the per-watt price of electricity consumed by the average Canadian consumer will be lower in real terms (accounting for inflation) than it is today. My friend Tristan Laing thinks the cost will be the same or higher. The price in question will be that quoted on the average Canadian’s electricity bill.

He has posted the same declaration on his blog.

[Update: 12 August 2006] I agree with a commenter that the cost per kilowatt-hour will be the easiest metric according to which this wager can be settled. To give a very approximate contemporary value, the cost to consumers for each kilowatt-hour of electricity used in Ontario today is about 5.8 cents. I will come up with a Canadian average soon.