GOING UP to Anacortes and not visiting Canada, which lay only two hours’ drive away, would not have done justice to our tour. Nearest to the Canadian border was Vancouver, again a two-hour drive. We had our hotel booking at the Fairmont Waterfront. Our rooms on the 11th floor gave a spectacular view of Canada Place and Waterfront.
The hotel itself was an interesting place as it had atop a third-floor terrace balcony, chef’s garden with eleven beds and more than thirty herbs and edible flowers — from arugula and tulips to Chamomile and catnips. It was common sight to have kitchen gardens on roofs. One of the hotels had its kitchen garden atop the last floor terrace open to tourists.
Across the road was Canada Place, like a huge ship at port. It related many stories. Indian legends, shipwrecks, romantic interludes on luxury liners, Vancouver’s history and scenic beauty, freight and cargo, export and imports and Vancouver and Canada’s development in world trade.
The city’s history has unfolded around the premier location Canada Place occupies in Vancouver’s harbour. People have not forgotten the fire that ripped through the hatches of a liner, the S.S. Green, moored in Vancouver’s harbour on the West side of what today is Canada Place. It caused and explosion that broke $30,000 worth of windows in downtown and scattered debris over the city and Stanley Park. It was the worst disaster since the city burnt down in 1886. Flames tore through the hatches, hurling whiskey, lumber and pickles into the air.
Edged with beaches and backed by indigo peaks, Vancouver is tied with Zurich as the best place in the world to live according to Mercer Human Resource Consultancy, 2000 and 2001. It is the gateway to the Pacific Rim and a prime destination for 40,000 new residents each year. With a population of almost 2 million, Greater Vancouver is the third-largest city in Canada after Toronto and Montreal. You see all kinds of people including Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Japanese, Koreans and a growing number of Iranians and Latin Americans.
Also known as Terminal City, Vancouver was established on the Granville Town site after the Canadian Pacific Railway decided to extend its line 20kms westward from Port Moody to the coast, in 1886. The fledging city boomed during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. Later, shipbuilding, mining, forestry, tourism, communications, film production and computer technology emerged as the leading industries by the beginning of the 21st Century.
Like any city, Vancouver has a lot to offer to first-time visitors. If you drive heading North on the Lion’s Gate Bridge, there comes a point where you can view the North Shore Mountains in perfect symmetry. Up there, dusted with lingering pockets of snow, are the twin landmarks believed to be “The Lions”. The craggy 5,800-ft peaks predate the bridge by about 20 million years. They date from an age when the region was an ocean basin punctuated by a chain of volcanic islands. Over the ages, their eruptions helped form the Coast Mountains that define the limits of today’s Vancouver.
Our guide related an interesting story of the peaks known as “The Two Sisters” in local native lore. She recalled a time when the Capilao Nation made peace with the Upper Coast enemy. When the chief’s twin daughters suggested he invite the foe to a feast being held in their honour, he agreed. The deity said, “I will make these young-eyed maidens immortal.” Then in the cup of his hands, the deity lifted the chief’s two daughters and set them forever in a high place for they had given birth to two offspring — Peace and Brotherhood. However, it was Vancouver’s colonial British founding fathers who named them “The Lions” in 1890. Their roundness against the rugged peaks of the Coast Mountains reminded them of Sir Edwin Landseer’s lions that guard Nelson’s columns in Trafalgar Square. Almost all the islands, inlets and peaks, were christened with a homesick nod either to Queen Victoria, the Royal Navy or England, at large.
The Lions Peaks are celebrated by sculptor Charles Marega’s twin concrete lions that guard the South approach to Lion’s Gate bridge. Other stone lions stand guard at various points in the city. A fine granite pair lies in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, formerly the provincial courthouse. By the way, Vancouver Art Gallery was exhibiting over 70 original Rembrandt prints, spanning the artist’s entire print-making career, including landscapes, Biblical themes and self-portraits.
Most were lifetime impressions, printed in the artist’s own studio. All reflected the genius for print-making that made Rembrandt one of the most celebrated artists of his days and one of the most enduring artistic icons.
In his gifted hands, the black ink and white paper of the print medium became rich with atmosphere and emotion. All over East Vancouver, a generation of Italian immigrants has placed ornamental lions on gateposts for good luck. Chinese stone lions also known as Foo Dogs maintain their dutiful watch over the entrance to the Metropolitan Hotel. Passers-by give them a pat for good fortune.
In the years before Vancouver became a city in 1886, Dead Man’s Island was a cemetery for both Indians and Pioneer settlers. An Indian legend tells of a battle fought here in which 200 warriors volunteered to die in exchange for the safety of captive women and children. The island was home to squatters in the late 1800s and was quarantine during a Small-pox epidemic in 1888. Now, after dispute on ownership, it is the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve’s Training Base.
If you hear a bang at 9 o’clock, do not jump off you seat. Every night, the boom of a cannon rumbles out from Hallelujah Point in Stanley Park. The park is Vancouver’s rowing and swimming club officially established in 1899. Soon after cricket, rugby, yachting and tennis were added to the list of activities. The rowing club has provided Canada with world-class teams that have won medals in various Olympic Games dating back to 1924, when a four-man crew won the silver medal at the Paris Olympics. Lord Stanley, governor General of Canada in 1889, said of the Park: “To the use and the enjoyment of all colours, creeds and customs.”
Stanley Park offers spectacular sea and harbour views. A meandering sea wall surrounds the tangled rain forests of virgin timber hundreds of years old — one of them was pointed out by the guide as 500 years old. Gardens, picnic areas, play grounds, ocean beaches, athletic facilities, a summer outdoor theatre, restaurants, a zoo and the world famous Vancouver Aquarium, all make up for the special world of Stanley Park. The famed 9 ‘O’clock gun, cast in England in 1816, has been in active service since 1894. It is said it started as a fishing curfew signal. Others call it a noisy timepiece. But you cannot set your watch by it. It fires precisely at 9 O’clock, but the sound will reach you some seconds later, depending on where you are. That is why for the ship’s captain, it is the flash that counts. He never waits for the sound to reach him.
The totem poles in Stanley Park are reminders of a sophisticated aboriginal civilization. These peoples expressed their cultural beliefs in monumental sculptures unique in the entire world. They are close to what we see at Kafiristan in Chitral. The carved symbols on poles and buildings, the intricate basketry and woven textiles of the coastal Indians constitute a heritage of unique artistic expression that is still practised by British Columbian native artists and craftsmen today. The poles represent the exchange of ideas and iconography between all the coastal aboriginal nations. A village in Stanley Park called Whoi-Whoi was occupied until the late 1800s by a band of the Coast Salish Indians.
GOING UP to Anacortes and not visiting Canada, which lay only two hours’ drive away, would not have done justice to our tour. Nearest to the Canadian border was Vancouver, again a two-hour drive. We had our hotel booking at the Fairmont Waterfront. Our rooms on the 11th floor gave a spectacular view of Canada Place and Waterfront.
