By William J. Furney
With a piece of chalk, the androgynous person kneeling at a propped-up blackboard is drawing a representation of Palestinian embroidery in white as a pro-Gaza sit-in at the University of British Columbia nears a week long. Across the border, in the United States, thousands of students were being arrested for refusing to disband their campsites protesting at Israel’s high-casualty war against Hamas in the Palestinian territory; but here today, on the sprawling research and educational campus on the dramatic western shores of Vancouver, two seemingly uninterested police officers idle about, signs of ennui and life-draining boredom etched on their pale, listless faces. You got the feeling they regretted their decisions to become agents of law and order.
“It’s terrible,” the chalker, dressed in a flowing black garment that seemed elusive of a name, told me, and I agreed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s then-seven-month offensive in bombed-out Gaza, following Hamas’ surprise October 7 attack on the country, had led to nearly 35,000 deaths, and there was no tangible end in sight.
We, student son Reuven and I, moved on from the muted Canadian protest.
I had arrived in Vancouver the afternoon before, on a 10-hour flight from London, England, that had been delayed by three hours (due to an issue with the original British Airways plane that was swapped for another), and a preceding flight that was delayed by five hours (no reason given). I ended up not taking that one, instead booking another at the last minute and arriving at my London airport hotel just after midnight, as planned (instead of 5am, when the other flight landed).
The flight to Vancouver was full and dull, apart from expansive scenes of ice floes after leaving Greenland. I was transfixed by the vast vista, thinking the enormous lumps of ice were like puzzled jigsaw pieces trying to get back into configuration.
Then: “No videoing!”
The stern instruction was issued by a joyless and fierce-eyed female flight attendant, blaring at me as my phone camera segued from window to the aisle in front. Middle-aged, copiously wrinkled and with hair resembling the worn-out strands of an overused sweeping brush, she appeared jaded, in body and mind. Perhaps soul as well.
As I went back to my seat, I imagined this scolding woman had become disillusioned with a once-dazzling career in the sky that had descended into sleep-deprived monotony. And whereas the prospect of a new country and city at the end of a flight had years before thrilled her, now all she wanted to do was climb into bed and stay there, never again having to deal with dreary jetlag or serve up food and drink to excitable faces while flying back and forth across the Atlantic. She had had enough.
Swooping over the snow-covered North Shore Mountains as you come in to land in Vancouver is a giddy pleasure, and it’s a breeze getting through the airy, unclogged airport, where polite machines take the drudgery out of queuing for passport control. It was a short taxi ride to the trendy Kitsilano neighbourhood, with its alluring beach-and-boho vibe and rugged mountain views — a world away from the claustrophobic building clumps of New York City we had visited months earlier. It is reassuring to live beside mountains: a reassuring, unchangeable backdrop that serves as an unwavering buttress to the oftentimes harsh blows of impermanent life.
Vancouver: For the Birds
In Vancouver, I found myself wondering who this place was really for, the people or the wildlife. The ubiquitous, dominating and droppings-happy Canada geese were everywhere, as if people didn’t matter at all and this was their land. It really isn’t, as they’re imports — introduced to the city in the 1960s “to enhance wildlife viewing”, says the City of Vancouver.
If you don’t look out, you’ll end up squirming in their coiled, green, slimy excrement, which was all over the pavements. When running in the early morning, I was forced to leap over these steaming mounds, starting from right outside the door of our apartment building; dodging the wicked piles became an unexpected, and unsightly, obstacle course.
The robust and largely indifferent beasts have the haughty indifference and self-entitlement of cats and create what the local authorities say is “excessive amounts of droppings” — defecating every nine minutes when feeding on the grass of parks, golf courses, sports fields and lawns. They’re aggressive and have become a pest in the city, their population having exploded into several thousand over the decades, the local authorities say.
But the waddling birds add to a sense that Vancouver is a city built around nature, and nowhere more is this evident than in the expansive Stanley Park that abuts the relatively minuscule metropolis. On a stroll around this 450-hectare oasis as tourist seaplanes buzzed overhead, Reuven and I stopped for light refreshment at a cafe and spied an apparently ravenous raccoon scouring rubbish bins and attracting a growing audience.
A Canuck Surprise
There was something odd about the Canadians. Unlike in cities such as the British capital, where timid and reserved passersby would dare not look you in the eye, let alone utter a few words — unless tipsy or drunk; and I had had such an encounter there several months earlier — here, it was almost the opposite. Dithering in deciding on whether to buy a packet of nuts in a supermarket, a fellow shopper came over to offer advice. “Too expensive,” he declared, and launched into reasons why. Perhaps he was drunk, or high, as Reuven had been one evening while shopping for dinner. “Are you high?” I asked as he failed to make a selection, and ended up with a large bag of jelly beans.
Probably half the city, if not more, was stoned. The scent of the streets was that of weed, diffusing like somnolent tendrils entrancing a population delighted by the proliferation of marijuana shops now that it, and certain other drugs, was legal. It took me right back to an unfortunate experience with the mind-altering substance in Amsterdam, one that swore me off the stuff for life.
A restroom at our Stanley Park pitstop had a used-syringe collection box, and in a Downtown parking lot we saw people hunkered down, burning drugs over foil — likely crack cocaine or heroin — and shooting up. Zombie-rendering fentanyl is a massive problem in Vancouver, just like in parts of the United States.
The opioid crisis aside, other locals cheerily said hello in the streets, and all around, there was a pervasive sense of bonhomie, that this Canadian city welcomed everyone with arms thrust wide and a proud, generous smile. It was unnerving, an enthusiastically warm attitude I had not known since my time in Southeast Asia, and India too. I couldn’t decide if this merry outlook was genuine, off-putting or downright annoying — as in leave me alone while I go about my business (in which case, I was the grump). Were Canadians simply trying too hard to be liked?
The answer, partially at least, came in a bar.
We had been shooting pool late one afternoon at a busy downtown bar and restaurant when I went to the restroom to change clothes, as I had been unsure of the weather and had brought jeans and a sweater in case it turned cold. Somewhere amid my contortionist changing act in a poorly lit cubicle, my phone, a relatively recent Apple, fell on the floor and, unaware, I walked out without it.
Around 10 or 15 minutes later, as we were ambling down a quiet street, I reached for my phone to photograph a building, and quickly realised I didn’t have it. A jolt of panic shot through me, because at no time is this device more vital than when you’re travelling. Mine had airline tickets and accommodation bookings and I used it as a debit card — plus all the previous photos, videos and everything else stored in it, which along with hundreds of contacts may or may not have backed up to the cloud.
Instantly realising I’d dropped the phone in the loo, we hurried back to the bar but multiple searches of the cubicle revealed nothing. The restaurant manager said no phones had been handed in and just as we were about to leave, I made a last-shot, surely equally hopeless effort and asked a barman if anyone had found the thing.
“This one?” he said, picking up a device from behind the busy bar.
“That’s it,” I said, folding onto the beer-lined counter with relief as I profusely thanked the man — and, silently, the Good Samaritan who had handed it in.
Where else in the world would that happen? Almost nowhere, and it’s a testament to the legendary good nature and honesty of the Canadian people. (E-bike phone banditry is a phenomenon in the UK.)
Hockey, The National Obsession
You don’t have to be long in Vancouver, and perhaps all of Canada, to realise how nuts people are about hockey. The lightning-fast game, played on ice, is top of Canadians’ most-loved sports, according to a survey by Halifax firm Narrative Research earlier this year, beating 31 others as their firm favourite to watch. (A total of 22% of respondents chose hockey; 10% favoured football; and 8% of those who took part said they watched basketball the most.) We found bars were packed with cheering fans while buses displayed signage in support of local teams.
Canadians seemed to pivot their schedules around the next big game featuring their home team — much in the way, I suppose, Brits do with football. Even in tourist-thronged Gastown, the trendy part of the city and featuring a steaming, whistling clock that proves it doesn’t take much to amuse people, TV screens were tuned to only one thing: hockey.
At one time, players threw a dead octopus onto the ice, to show support for a team, and in recent years, even sharks, according to media accounts. Various fish have also been flung. Thankfully these peculiar traditions have mostly died out, in large part due to stricter rules and penalties.
It wasn’t long until I was soaring back to the snowy mountains as my British Airways plane raced back to London. And although I had only spent four nights in this quirky place of natural beauty and its warm and inviting people, I felt drawn to its undercurrent of charm and enticing allure — a special place in a contrasting land that had the cosy feel of home.
- Main image: William J. Furney