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| Ucluelet B.C. |
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| Ucluelet B.C. |
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| Tofino B.C. |
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| Ucluelet B.C. |
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| Ucluelet B.C. |
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| Tofino B.C. |
Beautiful Tofino and Ucluelet, Vancouver Island, B.C.
I miss the ocean. I miss the sound of waves and the silent presence of an infinity of water. I miss the seabirds flying over the sea. I miss looking up at the sky to anticipate nature’s unsettled moods…
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| Q.E. Park |
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| Q.E. Park |
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| Minoru Park |
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| West End |
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| West End |
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| West End |
Fall arrive expectedly; it's the most predictable thing we have, the passing of time, the changing colours of trees, the shorter days, the cooler air… I’m just waiting for the colour changes and suddenly that I'm already in it and all is well and that summer has gone without my even knowing, that the world goes on, craziness goes on and on, and on…
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| North Shore |
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| On the Seawall |
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| continued... on the Seawall |
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| The Lion Gate |
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| Siwash Rock |
I saw more than I can tell
and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner
the shape of things in the spirit,
and the shapes of all shaped's as they must
live together like one being. —Black Elk Speaks
It is late September. There is an indefinable magic in the air. Everything is calm. There is stillness in the air. The autumn is a season of melodrama and reflection. The passing of time, like the north shore on the emerald water, is more noticeable in this time of the year than any other.
Soon
We'll be treading through wet leaves,
pushing what's left of summer with a boot
in the immense twilight where we'll come to feel
that life is but a matter of a day,
that all things born must perish,
that tasks are all in vain,
that one knows nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
What am I doing in this park,
trotting out these hackneyed tropes?
Fall, evening, the end of all of it....
It's getting late, rain is on the way.
I'll catch cold if I don't go back home.
—Elegy Written in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park, Robert Melançon
The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty wrote Yoshida Kenkō, a 14th-century Japanese Buddhist monk.
The sakura, or cherry blossom. The trees are famously fleeting. They bloom for only a week or two, and then the petals are gone. Other flowers — plum blossoms — last longer. Why go to such great lengths to cultivate something as fragile as the cherry blossom?
Because beauty lies in its own vanishing. Life is ephemeral. Everything we know and love will one day cease to exist, ourselves included. That is life’s one certainty. The cherry blossom is lovely not despite its transience but because of it. This has always been the case.
The pandemic has driven home our own transience. And while it may be too much to ask to celebrate this truth under such dire circumstances, we can learn to tolerate the unknown, and perhaps even catch glimpses of the beauty underlying life’s uncertainties.
—Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountain and flowing for 1,375 kilometres (854 mi), into the Strait of Georgia at the city of Vancouver.
Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” —A.A. Milne
It was the 21st of February, 1971. I was standing on a platform in Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. In the brightness of a cold morning, a suitcase at my feet, I was watching the Pan Am 747, the largest jumbo jet in the world, which would soon take me to New York then to Toronto. I was full of fear and uncertainty. It was all scarily accurate. It was, for instance, opting for the remote island life and a chance at the new world’s infinite opportunities instead of a gloomy future in a male dominated society because my choices in life were so limited. Looking back, this move shine through time like the northern light. It was a turning point, allowing me to have education and stand upright in my adopted country Canada. After many places, many moves, here I am, in Vancouver now.
