Vancouver - fish, markets and galleries

A Beluga whale - described by Jonty as 'a big white rubbery freak of nature'. All heart.
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We flew over the middle bit of Canada (via Sunwing, an airline I secretly worried didn't actually exist since I'd booked it on-line & had never heard of it - turns out it IS real and very nice too) and arrived in Vancouver late Monday evening. There was a further 3 hours time difference so at 11pm we felt like it was 2am - no problems coaxing the boys to bed tonight!

We stayed at the YWCA hotel which was very central and fabulous, nice and cheap (we had a shared bathroom down the hall), very clean large room and lovely people. There was a communal kitchen where we met some interesting characters; an Indian lady from Australia in her 60s visiting relatives, an ex-fisher-woman & construction worker from Vancouver island who gave us some good tips on things to see there, a Norwegian couple over looking for an apartment and so on. The hotel was part way between a hostel and a hotel, and gave us a taste of the social aspects of hostel life that we have missed staying in budget chain hotels.

completely different in a bonkers Bjork sort of a way

Archie and the Archer fish
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Vancouver itself was chilly and grey, Jont displayed his usual antipathy towards cities and disliked it (on principal as far as I could work out), but I liked it very much. The mountains surround it and can be seen from almost any street corner, the water is close and give an open feel to the place.

We went to Stanley Park by bus and visited the aquarium which we all enjoyed. Archie in particular enjoyed it - there was a talk on Archer fish (he felt the obvious affinity) which he was transfixed by and went up at the end to ask questions which was great (they are developing more confidence about meeting and talking to different people which is lovely to see).

Stanley getting some fibre at Granville Island
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It was rainy and cold when we came out though, and we all felt a bit flattened by the journey the night before. Headed home via the Chinese supermarket and had dinner before flaking out.

On Wednesday we went to Granville Island which is a big fresh food market with lots of shops and galleries surrounding it. We had a great time wandering round, ogling all the lovely fresh food (still obsessing us) and picking out stuff for dinner. There was a kids market which we had heard good things about but it was a bit of a tourist trap - loads of shops with expensive things for kids run by people who didn't seem to like children very much, even the play area cost money to enter.

Vancouver Art Gallery
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After that Jont took the kids home to do their lessons and I headed to Vancouver Art Gallery to see the big Georgia O'Keefe exhibition there. It was very interesting to see her work chronologically displayed, together with photos of her taken by her husband Alfred Steiglitz and Todd Webb. Kind of ironic considering her insistence that her work should not be about her as a person or de-constructed too much, but it was fascinating to see. Her work seems to display a synaesthetic understanding, whether learned or natural I wasn't sure but I felt very at home with all the beautiful curves and colours after having worked on my synaesthesia film with Adam in Toronto last month. I bought a poster of her painting Blue & Green Music (1919) and had it posted home (a guilty credit card moment).

Blue and green music (1919) Georgia O'Keefe
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At the gallery as well there was an exhibition of the work of Emily Carr and the 'Group of Seven'. The group of seven were 7 male painters who tried to capture Canada's landscape in an iconic European style. Their work seemed very macho and colonial next to Emily Carr's painting, which - though they use the same subject matter - are completely different in a bonkers Bjork sort of a way.

I loved Emily Carr instantly from her photo (with dog) - whilst Georgia O'Keefe looked so cool and straight from the pages of a Toast catalogue, Emily Carr is just full of idiosyncratic character. She raised sheepdogs, ran a boarding house, made pottery and gave up painting for years because she was so fed up with people not getting what she was trying to do. Her work turns the Canadian landscape into a dark mythic place seething with an unsettling feeling of movement, I didn't exactly like her paintings but I was really drawn to them. In contrast the Group of Seven stuff looked tame, too busy and trying too hard.

Georgia O'Keefe - cool
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It was bliss to enjoy a bit of time alone - the one thing we rarely get at the moment - and I came back feeling very energised. Unlike Jonty who'd been doing multiplication with the kids all afternoon... never mind, there's some kind of important sporting events on soon (when is there not?) I think so he'll get his own time off.

The next day we picked up out hire car (and our cheap advance greyhound tickets for Seattle next week) before heading out to the open road for the long drive to the Rockies, Jonty with a big smile on his face to be leaving the smoke...