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Vancouver, September 6
By Milt Abel | September 15, 2008
| September 15, 2008When you’re standing in full sun and it’s still a handful of degrees cooler than it was in as many days ago, the subtle awareness that a season is turning breaks into you thoughts. I was in Vancouver, BC just seven days prior to this day and it was just a sunny, but not as cool; the Earth has tilted its head away, like a traveler considering what will lay ahead, and all around me is cooler for it. The concrete in the buildings doesn’t hold and radiate as much of the previous day’s warmth, the ground does the same, and the trees and grass and shrubs have somehow changed their chemistry so they smell and just ‘feel’ different. Perhaps it is a prehistoric sense, a nudge to our species from all of Mother Nature to begin storing goods. Others there in Vancouver had somehow sensed the change as well; storefronts I had passed along in my walk were already displaying Halloween candy and costumes.
Summer to autumn is my favorite turn of a season, it evokes memories of emotions and turning points in my life, occurring more frequently in this time of year than any other, that often were both sweet and sad at the time. In what little perspective I’ve managed to gather over the years I realize those dramas, which were so deeply felt at the time, were often lacking of any real and lasting consequence. Poignant, if you think about it. I suppose for me that would be a good definition for poignancy: joy and sadness at the same time while carrying little consequence. When real consequences pile up poignancy leaves the room altogether.
Like the previous Saturday in Vancouver I dedicated myself to a walk around this beautiful city’s West End. That part of town contains great shopping and a park, Stanley Park, which contains more majesty than any other municipal park I’ve visited. NYC’s Central Park and SF’s Golden Gate don’t have over ninety-percent of their perimeter crowned with the Pacific Ocean like this one. An eight kilometer paved path encircles the park; immediately to one side is the ocean and on the other are woods, rolling grass hills, childrens playgrounds, and an aquarium –just to name only a few of its attractions.
On this day I didn’t stroll through the park but found myself diverted to a street fair taking place on Davies Street. For roughly ten blocks they had closed off the street to foot traffic only, and artisans and storekeepers and restaurants had set up booths and displays outside the curb and into the street. There were also political and religious groups entreating people to join their cause. An Obama For President tent was well staffed and when I jokingly asked them if they needed a map, being in Canada and all, I was informed there were over 25,000 expatriates and holders of dual citizenship in the Greater Vancouver Area who were eligible to vote for the candidate. I ended up being the one looking lost. Also at the street fair several churches were represented with displays and handouts, trying to increase their fold, one even offered free chocolate for attending the next day’s services, which seemed counterproductive to me: we’ll indulge your senses if you’ll commit to some piety.
I had been warned a couple times about the walk back to the ship. The Serenade of the Seas was docked at the slightly remote Balintyne Pier rather than Canada Place, which is right downtown and close to the city’s West End. Into town I had taken a city bus –the driver kindly reaching into his own pocket to exchange my US dollars for Canadian tender so it could be accepted by the bus’s fare machinery. So I had driven by the despair I was now walking through for the mile or more down Hastings Street. I was later informed that drug addicts from all over Canada ended up in this area; the winters were survivable in Vancouver if you had to sleep outside, and this was certainly not true of Winnipeg. Later, when I reached the pier I was informed by a security guard who had worked the Hastings neighborhood there were over two hundred agencies, charities, and non-profit help programs operating in there to offer a hand out of the Hell I walked through. He told me it’s been like that for years and years.
Two hours earlier I had been a mile away at a park near the Aquatic Center (a world class indoor lap pool) and two eight year-old boys were rolling down a gentle grassy slope like logs and giggling at every revolution: what every Saturday morning should be. As I sensed and saw the despair and anger surrounding me on Hastings Street I knew these addicts, in their mind, had no other choice but to be on these sidewalks and alleys. That grassy, gentle hill might as well have been on the far side of the moon. Here, on this street, block after block I saw drunkenness and stupor, arguing and throwing blame, and the physically and spiritually emaciated.
Those sweet kids not so far away, and absolute sadness in what lay on the sidewalks of Hastings Street –maybe some of these poor souls had rolled down that nearby slope themselves years early. The consideration didn’t hit me with any poignancy; there was too much consequence in the fall.
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April 16th, 2009 at 5:37 am
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