July 1st is Canada Day, the national celebration of when Canada became a nation rather than a British Colony as declared by Queen Victoria in March 1867. In 1879, July 1st was established as a holiday titled ‘Dominion Day’, and in 1958 the Canadian Government organised for formal observances to occur every year. In 1982, ‘Dominion Day’ was renamed ‘Canada Day’.
We attended the Canada Day celebrations in Vancouver starting at Canada Place. When we emerged from the Skytrain the city was already bustling. There was a stage for music, a market, a sports arena, a hall dedicated to Canada’s military, lumberjack shows, picnic areas with buskers, and food trucks and stalls galore.
As organised as it was, the feeling was quite casual except for the extensive lines for free Iced Tea, Yoghurt and other assorted items. The Lumberjack show was just that, a show. There were four lumberjacks and an MC who joked and bantered between races, providing an enjoyable show as well as displaying various tools and skills of the trade. In the Sports arena visitors were treated to a wheelchair basketball performance that included a couple of Olympic and young adult athletes against the general public which was a joy to watch.
In the early afternoon we walked across Vancouver towards Granville Island. On our way we came across a Marijuana festival outside the Vancouver Art Gallery with dozens of tents selling various strains of weed and paraphernalia, complete with a stage offering Hip Hop performances. Further along was an acrobatics display with two people undertaking some excellent displays of balance and dexterity.
Granville Island was abuzz with people flowing every which way. The Public Markets and most of the outlets were open, half a dozen stages scattered throughout were providing live music. The Island also had numerous workshops, art displays, buskers, and many family friendly activities. There was also the MELA! Festival thrown in for good measure, offering a small international bazaar, music, dance and food. Canada Day also marks the end of the Vancouver Jazz festival, with over a dozen acts on four stages, several of whom provide two shows. Here we caught Dawn Pemberton offering soulful harmonies, the Kristin Fung band providing Lounge music, and Tim Sars Band with eclectic saxophone driven jazz. We also caught a Mariachi Troupe performing next to a bar.
We left the island in the early evening to make it back to downtown for the Canada Day parade, a long and diverse parade highlighting the multicultural nature of the city. It started with an excellent display of precision motorcycling courtesy of the Police, followed by an assortment of marching bands, military cadets, bagpipes, dancing girls, military and police vehicles, chorus groups, community groups and associations (middle-eastern, Asian, European, Polynesian and more), regional floats, martial arts troupes, Asian drummers, beauty pageant winners, anime appreciation, street racing, and more. To list them individually would take more space than the entirety of this article. The parade went on for over an hour and the most glaring omission of this multi-cultural parade was the lack of any First Nations people.
On Canada Place, they had lit the Torch built for the Olympics, and thousands of people were finding a place to sit and enjoy the fireworks display that would close out the evening. We found a space along the seawall to watch and enjoyed the display, enhanced by the crowd breaking into the national anthem, O’Canada.
I mentioned that Vancouver is a beautiful city with a lot of green space to enjoy, one of these spaces is the impressive Stanley Park, offering residents and visitors the opportunity to walk in a forest on the edge of downtown. There are numerous walking and cycling trails throughout and around the park and offers quite a diverse view – coniferous forest, wetlands, lakes and beaches. The park is a delight to walk in, and is reasonably well signposted throughout. We spent a few hours wandering various trails starting on the northern shore of Lost Lagoon north to Point Prospect exploring the western half, then south through the eastern half stopping off at Klahowya Village, a coastal Salish (the collective name of tribes from the Vancouver area) operated space to educate visitors about First Nation culture and history. The Klahowya village offers a range of indigenous cultural experiences such as storytelling, dance and song, arts demonstrations and craft workshops. For anyone who is interested in exploring a little of the rich and varied First Nation cultures, this is an excellent first stop.
An excellent second stop is visiting the Museum of Anthropology at British Columbia University. The MOA was founded in 1949 and is a public as well as teaching museum that moved to its current location in 1976. It contains an extensive collection of artefacts from Canadian and other First Peoples across the world. The main entrance hall presents a number of welcome posts, totem poles and sculptures before opening into a large windowed room of bentwood boxes, feast dishes, more totem poles and other artefacts. We took one of the free tours of the facility and were introduced to the indigenous art and some of the political and cultural practices of the people such as the potlatch – a ceremonial gathering, usually involving a feast, used to impart changes to law, status, property rights and other things of import. The Potlatch was banned by the Canadian government for nearly seventy years and were held in secret by some First Nation societies.
The MOA also has an incredible display called ‘The Multiversity’, which includes over 16000 artefacts in glass cabinets and drawers of indigenous cultures across the globe. There are three other galleries inside the MOA, a permanent display for the artist Bill Reid centred around his sculpture ‘The Raven and the First men’, another featuring a collection of European Ceramics (donated by Dr Walter C Koerner), two for temporary exhibits, one currently featuring modern art inspired by First Peoples, and another featuring Afro-Cuban art. There are lecture halls and research rooms, and an outdoor exhibits including a Haida House complex and numerous Totem Poles. The building is also a work of art unto itself, being specifically designed by architect Arthur Erickson.
We easily spent a few hours exploring the MOA, and I would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject. It costs around $17/adult entry, and is well worth it.
Just across the harbour is Grouse Mountain, a very popular destination for tourists and fitness training. It is easy to get to with regular public transport available on both sides of the harbour. Grouse has a few trails to choose from, the most popular being ‘The Grind’ (a one way trail up the ridgeline), there were dozens of people gathering at the bottom to do this trail and at the top most of the fitness crowd had completed it. We opted to take the new BCMC trail (there is also an old BCMC trail which intersects with the new around half way up), which is a less popular trail and more appealing to me. The trail makes use of the forests root structure, enhancing the natural stairs with stone, fallen timbers or planks. The BCMC is almost pure ascent through lush forest that is quite clearly marked (160 main and hundreds of supplementary tags), and while only 4 kilometres in length, it would provide a good challenge/workout to most. A note though, when you near the top there will be a sign with an option to take 2 routes – keep left and don’t bother with the Sun View as it is a poorly marked trail that doesn’t offer anything extra aside from a view of the chair-lift and part of the golf course. There are facilities at the bottom, where you can also catch the gondola (if you don’t want to walk) as well as at the chalet at the top including a number of restaurants and other activities including a lumberjack show, some zip-lines, a bear enclosure and more. You can catch the Gondola down the mountain when you are done, which offers an incredible view of the city.
Another great way to appreciate the beauty of Vancouver is to look at it from a different perspective. One option for that is to hire a kayak for a couple of hours and paddle around the harbour. We picked up our kayaks from a place near the stadium at False Creek and paddled west along the shore. From down on the water the cities glass spires rise majestically from the tree line that encircles the city, and there is beauty in the modern designs. The waves on the inlet were shallow and the wind was low, allowing us to paddle with little effort past the millions of dollars of yachts anchored there. The most common things that interrupt the serenity of paddling the harbour are the aqua buses, which are very polite to other water users, but so frequent, (and occasionally, one of the yachts makes its way across the harbour) that you have to deal with their wake, but is a small price to pay for seeing the city like this. Over the two hours we spent on the water we made our way past the Burrard Street Bridge along the Sunset Beach Park before turning around and coming back along the southern side of the harbour, past Vanier Park and Granville Island. It’s a great alternative way to experience the city.
Summer in Vancouver is also festival time, with another starting every few days. This particular weekend was the Dragon Boat Festival, which offered a range of live music at a beer garden in the Olympic Village Square. Over a couple of beers we listened to Alex Cuba perform a variety of songs in Spanish and English.
We visited the Surrey Night Markets, open throughout the summer, which offered a variety of Asian foods and other stalls including of handicrafts, mobile phone paraphernalia, posters, a stage, and other activities. It was a decent market to visit but for one you have to pay to enter, there are other free alternatives that are better.
The Vancouver Jazz Festival was in full swing, offering a range of free as well as paid performances in such number that is easy to be entertained gratis for the entire weekend. We dropped by David Lam Park on the Saturday and returned on the Sunday afternoon, where they had a small entertainment district setup with a variety of stalls, food outlets and a bar.
We saw Sprïng (formerly SSRIs), a prog rock inspired band with heavy 60’s British influence. Euan Burton & Occurrences, an interesting contemporary jazz ensemble both melodic and dissonant. 4=4, led by a violinist accompanied by guitar, bass and drums, played some beautiful harmonies blending jazz and rock. Lorraine Klaasen is a Montreal based Soweto born vocalist who presented South African inspired songs that were infectious and uplifting. The 24th Street Wailers, were a loud and intense electric blues ensemble fronted by drummer and vocalist Lindsay Weaver. Miami Device are a 10 piece with horns, guitars, drums, and keyboard providing some excellent funk. And The Belle Game, a Vancouver pop-rock-orchestral hybrid – not my cup of tea, but Vancouver seemed to love it.
The summer also brings the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival, for its 25th year, providing performances of ‘The Tempest’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and ‘Cymbeline’ as well as contemporary play ‘Equivocation’ by Bill Cain and a one-man retrospective on the history of Bard on the Beach. The Bard’s players are mostly local veteran actors, having played roles in a variety of TV and theatre, some of whom are in multiple performances. On Sunday we saw the Matinee of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.
The stage is at the rear of the tent with a portal opening out onto Park. It is multi-tiered stage with a singular lounge shrouded in an ornate umbrella. The players use the entirety of the stage in the performance, sometimes bringing extra props as required. It is a semi-contemporary take on the play with the language and story being original but some of the performances being inspired by modern media and modern music to enhance the audience experience. This modernisation is both to the performances benefit and detriment, with some of the music jarring me from the fantasy. Having the portal overlooking the park is also an excellent addition, adding a naturalist perspective to the experience especially when a downpour occurred mid-performance (such a torrent that I feel the actors would have preferred it to have occurred in the Tempest).
One of the beauties of Shakespeare is that it is so malleable that it is rare to see a poor interpretation, and it is a great joy when you see a good or excellent one. The Bard on Beach provided an excellent afternoon out and is well worth taking the time to enjoy.
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July 1st is Canada Day, the national celebration of when Canada became a nation rather than a British Colony as declared by Queen Victoria in March 1867. In 1879, July 1st was established as a holiday titled ‘Dominion Day’, and in 1958 the Canadian Government organised for formal observances to occur every year. In 1982, ‘Dominion Day’ was renamed ‘Canada Day’.
In the early afternoon we walked across Vancouver towards Granville Island. On our way we came across a Marijuana festival outside the Vancouver Art Gallery with dozens of tents selling various strains of weed and paraphernalia, complete with a stage offering Hip Hop performances. Further along was an acrobatics display with two people undertaking some excellent displays of balance and dexterity.
Festival thrown in for good measure, offering a small international bazaar, music, dance and food. Canada Day also marks the end of the Vancouver Jazz festival, with over a dozen acts on four stages, several of whom provide two shows. Here we caught Dawn Pemberton offering soulful harmonies, the Kristin Fung band providing Lounge music, and Tim Sars Band with eclectic saxophone driven jazz. We also caught a Mariachi Troupe performing next to a bar.
We left the island in the early evening to make it back to downtown for the Canada Day parade, a long and diverse parade highlighting the multicultural nature of the city. It started with an excellent display of precision motorcycling courtesy of the Police, followed by an assortment of marching bands, military cadets, bagpipes, dancing girls, military and police vehicles, chorus groups, community groups and associations (middle-eastern, Asian, European, Polynesian and more), regional floats, martial arts troupes, Asian drummers, beauty pageant winners, anime appreciation, street racing, and more. To list them individually would take more space than the entirety of this article. The parade went on for over an hour and the most glaring omission of this multi-cultural parade was the lack of any First Nations people.
I mentioned that Vancouver is a beautiful city with a lot of green space to enjoy, one of these spaces is the impressive 
An excellent second stop is visiting the 
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The stage is at the rear of the tent with a portal opening out onto Park. It is multi-tiered stage with a singular lounge shrouded in an ornate umbrella. The players use the entirety of the stage in the performance, sometimes bringing extra props as required. It is a semi-contemporary take on the play with the language and story being original but some of the performances being inspired by modern media and modern music to enhance the audience experience. This modernisation is both to the performances benefit and detriment, with some of the music jarring me from the fantasy. Having the portal overlooking the park is also an excellent addition, adding a naturalist perspective to the experience especially when a downpour occurred mid-performance (such a torrent that I feel the actors would have preferred it to have occurred in the Tempest).