What I Did On My Summer Holidays…

Once I was going to write a blog about seasons, and how lovely it is to live in a country with some.  Then the weather went screwy, it rained for 6 months solid, and I thought I’d better keep quiet.  But the sun came out in July, just as the school holidays started, and we had 2 solid months of really hot sun, long days and warm nights.  The west coast is breezy and fresh, never humid, and there is always water to head to if the heat becomes too much.  Today the rain returned, for the first time since July 22nd, and I wanted to reflect on our lovely summer.  So, this is what we did during our summer holidays…

Dinner by the fire at Deception Pass, WA

Tie-dyeing teeshirts at the Township 7 Winery

Raccoon hats and strange machines at Fort Langley

A free Vancouver Symphony Orchestra concert at Deer Lake

Swimming and jumping off the dock and more swimming everywhere there was water….

Beachcombing at Porteau Cove

Sailing School at Port Moody

And enjoying our garden as it grew, and grew and grew!

What did you do this summer?

I Love Denman Street

Amazeing* Laughter sculpture at Denman and Beach

When we first moved to Vancouver, we lived in an apartment at Rosellen Suites on Barclay, just off Denman Street, and during that first, cold, wet, bewildering month, we were often on Denman doing our grocery shopping, opening bank accounts or just looking for a warm dry place to stop and think.

Today we were back there, doing one of our favourite things – just hanging out at English Bay and Second Beach, and enjoying the crazy bustle of the Street.  In the sun, Denman is so colourful it is sometimes hard to take it all in.  The restaurants and cafes are so many and so inviting, I can never choose where to go and there are bike hire shops and book shops and art shops and cupcake shops and shops that really don’t seem able to decide what they are, not to mention crowds and crowds of people of all types.  There is a library and a community centre, which gives you a good idea that this is a nice place to live too.

As we drove home along Denman I realized that many of our key places in Vancouver, the ones that bring those first memories back, also remind me of my confusion and frustration in those days, and the panic bubbling just beneath the surface, but Denman Street felt, and still feels, well, comforting.  That sounds a bit strange for a bustling trendy tourist zone, but that was our experience and that is why, when I have saved up enough, my retirement plan is to move to English Bay and spend my days in Stanley Park, on the beach and trying out every single restaurant on the Street!

 

*this is not a spelling mistake, it really is spelled Amazeing, honest

Grow, Dammit, Grow!

This is the first page of our Migration Book.   We wrote it together to keep track of our feelings and dreams about our adventure moving to Vancouver.  On one page it says… “I’m going to have a GARDEN again!!”  Nearly 20 years of moving every 2 years has meant that countless times I have cut beds, made compost, dug in fertilizer, planted out and moved just as the soil gets good and the vegetables ripen.  I was really looking forward to getting a place with enough garden to make something special, and having enough time to do it.

Of course, our dream house is blessed with an aspen tree on one side, nearly 80 feet tall with roots that run through the lawn, surfacing every few feet like cresting dolphins.  So, raised beds it is, then.  My sister explained that, although we are on a similar latitude and the climate feels the same, one can’t just plant the same varieties as in England.  She bought me a book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon, which I read.

What it doesn’t tell you, but your neighbours will, is that everything is so bloomin’ late.  We’ve had a rotten couple of years, but even so, my innate English gardening sense goes off in March – “Brrrrring!  Spring Is Here!  Lambs are born!  Daffodils are out!  Plant something!”  I just can’t help myself – I gather the seed packets, and start preparing the soil.  Then I wait for soil to warm up.  Maybe Easter….. or late April….. I can wait until May…. Mothers Day, 13th May, still too cold….. my brother in law doesn’t plant out until late May, I can wait….. Where the F*!@ did June come from?  And why is it still cold?

Spider babies on jasmine

The Year It Became Normal

When do you finally get to stop saying “We’re new here” and start feeling like a real Vancouverite?  For us, that would be 2011 – we all agreed that was the year when it all started to seem “normal” (to a given value of normal in a family of 5 nutters, lunatics and worry-warts).

Looking back, our emigration fell into 3 neat time packages:

2009 The Year It Was Scary:  everything was new, everything was confusing, the job and money situation was downright terrifying and we spent a lot of time finding ways to distract ourselves from the terrible mistake we might have made.

2010 The Year It Was Fake: the jobs were going well, school was great, and we found a house, but it still didn’t feel real.  It was like an extended holiday with bits of real life thrown in, and I think the children were waiting for us to announce “It’s all been a big joke, we’re off back to England!”  We were still trying to do everything Vancouver had to offer, just in case this adventure ended.

2011 The Year It Became Normal:  I was half way through the year before I realized I had not thought “I’m in Vancouver!” for ages.  The news every morning on my commute (“CBC News broadcasting from downtown Vancouver”) is as comforting as Radio 2 used to be.  I smile when I see the eagles perched along Ladner Trunk Road, but I don’t pull over to take pictures any more.  I can discuss the relative merits of the ski hills, but we are busy with our regular weekend activities – figure skating, Ringette, grocery shopping, walking the dog and gardening; we’ll get a couple of weekends skiing in, but there’s norush – the mountains, and we, aren’t going anywhere for a while.

Vancouver view - the new normal

Babysitting Basics

Babysitting dolls is much easier...

Today I had the rare and wonderful privilege of seeing my eldest daughter in action as a babysitter.  I occasionally deliver and collect her from her assignments, but I don’t see her “at work”, as it were.  I see her arriving at her client’s house, shy and surly, and I see her fleeing the scene, shouting “Cheers!” as she shoves $5 bills into her pockets, but I cannot imagine that this little girl, my sulky barely-teenager, is in any way to be trusted with another family’s precious children.

Laurel completed the Babysitter’s Basics course, offered by her school at a ridiculously low price, when she was 11 years old (grade 6).  It was a 6 week course and she had to complete a work book and various tests.  When she showed me what it covered, I was a little worried – if they ever introduce a parenting test even close to as thorough as this course, we’d fail for sure.  She was now, essentially, an 11 year old paediatric nurse with a good grounding in nutrition, exercise techniques and could probably cover for any of the Kindergarten teachers if they were sick.

Of course, this did not stop her bullying her younger sisters, and we began to wonder what kind of babysitter she was going to be.  We decided that, at 11, she was still too young to be trusted with anyone else’s children, but if we could get 30 minutes uninterrupted conversation while we walked the dog alone, so be it.  We introduced a mantra before we went out…

“Laurel, until we get home you are no longer a big sister, you are the babysitter – what are you?”  “The Babysitter”

“Weasels, Laurel is no longer your sister.  She is the babysitter until we get home.  What is she?”  “The Babysitter.”

“How do we treat the Babysitter?” “With respect.”

Sometimes it worked, but as we all grew in confidence, Laurel started to get jobs around the community.  When we lived in England, we would never have considered using a babysitter younger than 16 years old.  Everyone seemed vague about the law about leaving children unattended, but we did not feel comfortable with any younger.  Here in Vancouver, the babysitting course is offered to every child in school and as a source of income, babysitting is highly sought after.   A friend’s 12 year old daughter spent the summer holidays providing full day care to 2 children, aged 2 and 4 years and nobody blinked.  The nearly-teens who complete the course are simply preparing for the next phase of their professional lives – life guarding at the pool, teaching swimming to tots, or teaching skating or working at summer camp.  They have a knowledge and love of smaller children which makes them careful, respectful and accepting of others younger than themselves.

Today Laurel was asked to babysit 2 young brothers from 11am to 4pm – she was expected to supervise nap time, meal times and fun time.  After taking them for a walk to the park, she found she could not open the door with the key she had been left, and was trying to figure it out for herself when I called to check up on her.  I drove over, opened the door and left her to it, but not before I had seen her calmly and confidently pick up the baby, move the stroller and chat to the toddler about his preference for lunch.  She is, of course, his favourite babysitter ever.

Spot The Weirdo

Man does naked yoga* in a public park ... no, seriously

Today we played Spot The Weirdo.  It was Katie’s idea.  We had decided to finally visit Kitsilano Beach to see what all the fuss was about, and it was a hot Saturday in July, so of course the place was absolutely packed.  My English subconscious came to the fore (not helped by the fact that my parents are staying with us, so the Englishness is always a little close to the surface), and I started huffing and puffing and worrying about where we would sit, and how clean the sand was, and whether there would be One Way signs in the washroom (see Don’t Do That).  We found a table at The Boathouse beach grill, ordered fish and chips and sat in the warm sun, just people watching.  After a while, Katie said “There should be a group of people who are called Weirdo Watch, and they should take pictures of all the weirdos they see and make a gallery with all the pictures and some video, and stuff.”  So we started looking for Weirdos for our gallery.

Wouldn’t you just know it? Every single person on Kits beach today was beautiful.  I mean, normally Vancouver can give you some satisfaction with a couple of nutters on each corner, someone on a penny farthing, at least a few stellar beards, someone in those crazy gorilla feet running shoes – maybe not weirdos, but close enough.  Today was officially Beautiful People On The Beach day.  We strolled along the prom, watching beach volleyball (the guys made Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in Top Gun look like pasty wimps), admiring the cutest babies out with their dazzling dads and yummy mummys, loving the cool old people on their benches… honestly, not a weirdo in sight.  Katie was very disappointed.  Tomorrow we’ll go to Walmart.

Sorry, I should probably make this post a bit more useful to those emigrating to BC.  Kits Beach is a lovely place, suited for the 20-30 year olds who like to hang out, see and be seen, and for those of us who just enjoy watching beach volleyball.

* OK, he was wearing flesh coloured  briefs, but I needed my extreme zoom to realise that.

Don’t Do That…! (You’ll go blind)

Back in England again (I’m making quite a habit of it), but this time with the whole family and a 2-week itinerary which includes visits to pretty much everyone we know, with some downtime thrown in.

So, I could go on and on about the beautiful countryside, the amazing food, the wonderful supermarkets, the great history and of course, our beautiful, amazing, wonderful and great family and friends who met us, hosted us, spoiled us and treated us.  I could go into great detail about the golden sand of Bournemouth beach, the majesty of Worcester Cathedral, the pungent woods carpeted in wild garlic and the total nuttiness of the Dr Who Experience at Olympia, but it would all be too much.

Instead, as this blog is supposed to be about emigrating to Vancouver, I’ll focus on just one difference I have found between the UK and our new home.  Forget the driving, the thickness of bacon and the price of wine.  Let’s talk about Rules.

When we first arrived in Vancouver, we crept about nervously, waiting to get the hang of the rules.  As Brits, we know there must be rules – Keep Off The Grass, No More Than 2 Schoolchildren in Shop, Exact Change Only etc etc.  Sometimes, they are secret, unwritten rules, passed down from generation to generation (the category that includes most table manners, for example) and others that just apply to your town, your county or your family (the rules of Monopoly only become a problem when you try playing it with someone outside your immediate family).  In time we learned to relax and accept that Vancouver doesn’t have rules, it has values.  The city operates on the thought process which goes something like this; “You can throw down litter if you like, but why would you, when everything’s so pretty, and there’s so many groovy bins around?”

So our return to England was a lot of fun, and when we got bored we played the “Spot The Don’t Sign”; first one to see a sign which wouldn’t be seen in Vancouver, got a prize.  My favourite was the washrooms on the pier at Bournemouth.  They are hard to find (public washrooms are a precious commodity in England), but worth the search.  You go down a staircase, divided in the middle with one side marked Down and the other side Up (there’s even a No Entry sign on the Up side).  There are miles of beautifully tiled corridors before you eventually emerge into a huge cavern, lined with cubicles and a central stand of wash basins.  On the wall was the best selection of Don’t signs including Don’t Wash Your Feet In The Basins!  and No Changing In The Toilets!

Bear in mind, this is a public washroom on a beach.  A glorious, golden sandy beach packed with visitors in the sunny weather.  Somewhere where people will get sandy and salty and want a chance to shower off and change into fresh clothes before they decide to extend their stay in town and spend some of their touristy money at a local restaurant or theatre.  In Vancouver, these washrooms would have showers, footbaths, drinking fountains and changing space, and be regularly cleaned.  The signs would read “Wash Your Feet In The Basin”, “Shower All You Like, Plenty of Hot Water”, “Heck, Live Here If You Want To”.

Whilst on the subject of washrooms, the lack of them and the lack of cleaners for them, I should mention Gheluvelt Splashpad in Worcester.  A derelict old paddling pool has been replaced with a wonderful, state of the art spray park which would not look out of place in Stanley Park.  It is surrounded by green slopes for picnics, benches for watchful parents, and, guess what? No Washrooms!  The washrooms are on the far side of the park – quite a trek with a dripping toddler.  Stanley Park provides not just washrooms but a giant Kid Dryer, blowing hot air on children who, like mine, really believe they are not going to get wet if they just play around the edge… whoops, too late!

We had a wonderful visit, and it was reassuring to find that we love England for all her eccentricities, but mostly as the place where we will find the people we love.  But this time, as the plane landed in Vancouver, I was glad to be home.

More In Love With Each Passing Day

Loon Lake

Last week I went on a retreat, and not a moment too soon.  After a difficult couple of weeks both at work and home, I was ready to kill.  OK then, not kill exactly, but certainly curl up in a corner with a bottle of red wine, a packet of smokes and a blanket and snarl at anyone who tried to make me sing “Kumbaya”.  I didn’t want to share, I didn’t want to meditate, I didn’t want to embark on a voyage of discovery.  I just wanted 5 bloody minutes to myself to shave my legs and read a page of a magazine without interruption.

We arrived, a group of 30 women connected only by the church we attend, at Loon Lodge, 7km down a potholed logging track on the side of a mountain.  It was dark, wet and the accommodation was basic*.  I dumped my sleeping bag and opened the wine, safe in my cocoon of misery – I was the only one there with too much work, not enough time and an increasing sense of desperation.  No one could possibly understand.

And you know the rest of that story… at least half the women there was going through the same, or worse, and we all feel despair and guilt at times.  So we worked on some answers and, I hope, all came away feeling  a lot better than we went in.  One of the answers was “stop piling up all the individual jobs into an unmanageable mountain, and start enjoying the individual moments.”

This week I have concentrated on enjoying those moments and made a very interesting discovery which I will share with you on this, the eve of Valentine’s Day.  The way I feel about Vancouver is very like my marriage.  The first rush of love, when we first smelled the fresh, snowy air from the mountains and discovered a new and wonderful view every day, is past.  But so is the insecurity of whether our infatuation would last, and stand the test of time.  We have been through some dark days, and many grey and wet ones, and we are still here.  We still find something lovely every day, even if it is just the way the drips fall from the leaves.  This week I shared with some work colleagues that I had asked my husband’s opinion on an outfit and he had said “It makes you look wide.”  That wasn’t the point of the story, but their horrified reaction showed that they fully expected the next line would be “So I killed him and buried him under the patio.” When I said that this is normal, that I value his opinion (on most things) and expect him to be honest, one of the most dour and cynical among us said “You guys are for keeps – that marriage is solid.”

I know we are only 2 years in, but we’ve seen the morning-after, hungover, slept-in-your-makeup Vancouver, and we still love it.  Perhaps this marriage is solid too.

More in love with each passing day...

* I should say, the view in the morning was very different, and Loon Lodge is the most beautiful place, with the kindest people and the best food.  It is also home to Camp Goodtimes, the Cancer Society Camp for children with cancer.

Days of Wonder

There are days when the rain stops, the sky clears and the whole world jumps to its feet in celebration.  Today was one of those days.  I drove to work as the horizon lightened and the mountains of Washington came into clear silhouette.  The sun started to rise behind Mount Baker, which looks like a giant white meringue at this time of year.  The sky blazed gold as I crossed the Alex Fraser Bridge and I looked in my rear view mirror at the glittering reflections off the skyscrapers downtown and the fresh white slopes of the ski mountains behind.  In Delta it was “Mad Bird Day”, a rare occurrence when the clear sky and the fresh breeze stirs up every seagull, crow, pigeon and starling to join a mad swirling crowd and buzz around the fields and farms.  They are watched by the Annual Gathering Of The Eagles – every tree lining the Ladner Trunk Road has at least one Bald Eagle, and the beautiful maple by the East Delta Hall had 5 fully grown dignitaries staring solemnly at the sunrise, just waiting for someone with a good camera to take the photo of the year.  Of course, I didn’t have mine with me, so I’ll have to decorate this post with a photo taken during the crazy snow year of 2008/2009.

Bald eagles in Delta

Days like these make up for the grey ones, make our hearts lift and set us up for the returning rains.  We know it won’t be long before the sun comes out again.

Camping Sissy

Porteau Cove looking West over Howe Sound

There's a Moose in my tent!

I hate camping.  Or should I say, I hated camping.  Stupid, soggy, saggy tent pitched either in a field miles from anywhere or squeezed into a 6 ft square area of the busiest campground in the world, with the neighbours’ 16 kids and endless dogs tripping over the guy ropes.

Waking miserable, cold, damp and scratchy with no chance of a shower or decent cup of tea.  It always rains.

That was until I came to British Columbia.  I discovered what camping can be like when the tent pad is level, when you have a picnic bench to eat at and a fire pit to gather round, when you are shaded by the trees and warmed by the sun and you can swim in the lake to get clean.  When you have space all around you and when your neighbours respect the quiet hours rules.  When there is always a risk that a bear might come through the camp, but you can be confident you put all the food in the car and locked the doors – didn’t you?  I know that the equipment is cheap to buy and easy to carry.  I am confident in the waterproofing on the tent, and I have learned how to cook spaghetti bolognaise under a tarpaulin shelter.  My children run wild for days at a time, entertaining themselves with trees, moss, streams and endless toasted marshmallows.  We are all filthy, unbrushed and smelly, and we love it.

Now, in the miserable wet dark days of January, I can dream of the beach front pitches at Porteau Cove, or catching the ferry and diving deep into the Islands to find the perfect hideaway, or driving into the mountains to camp by a cold, clear lake.  If I carry on this way, who knows? I might even be hiking into the back country and stringing up my food from a tree in a few years – maybe!