Ahh, life on the 28th floor in the West End of Vancouver is a big change from being in Vernon or wine tasting in the Southern Okanagan. It’s urban living and we’ve been here a week now and are loving it.
On our first full day, we took a walk and a water taxi to Granville Island and then back to have a drink at the bar at the Sylvia Hotel. It was a gorgeous evening and we had an amazing view of English Bay.
On Monday, I did an 8-mile walk leaving our condo on Melville street and heading along the water directly to Stanley Park where I followed the 6-mile perimeter around to English Bay, did some grocery shopping at Whole Foods on Robson, and returned. It was an absolutely stunning walk on a pretty day and I was not alone out there with scores of walkers, joggers, bikers, and I even saw three roller bladers (yay roller bladers!).
Today, we started our day by walking to the West End farmers market on Comox Street and buying a number of organic vegetables along with two large ceramic mugs, since the mugs here in the condo are too small for our tea needs.
Then, we headed over to the West Point Grey area near UBC and had lunch on W. Broadway, after which we walked down to Jericho Beach and the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and then along Point Grey Rd. admiring the extremely expensive homes ($14M to $30M according to our Zillow app) that border the water. They’ve done a great job putting a bike path all the way from UBC to downtown Vancouver so living anywhere on the West Side it’s possible to hop on your bike and pedal your way along the water, over the Burrard St. bridge, and into downtown.
In addition to lots of walking and exploring, we’ve also been eating out a lot since almost everything is open and there are lots of restaurants to try. In this area, the vast majority of restaurants are Asian, either Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or other Asian. We’ve actually been somewhat hard pressed to find any restaurant that isn’t Asian. This is because Greater Vancouver’s population is now 42% Asian and South Asian (48% of European descent), with people of Chinese origin being the largest single ethnic group at 21%.
Though Chinese men first came to what they then called the “British Colonies” back in 1858 for the gold rush and then a decade later to work on building the Canadian Pacific Railway, persons of Chinese origin were still only 5% of the population of Greater Vancouver in 1981. Since then, there has been a huge influx from Hong Kong and mainland China with massive purchasing of real estate and conspicuous consumption including “supercars” such as Maseratis, Aston Martins, Porsche, Range Rovers. The real estate buying has pushed prices up and caused some concern and resentment among locals to the point that a 15% foreign buyers’ tax was implemented by the NDP (New Democratic Party) government in 2016 and has now been increased to 20%. Frankly, coming from California where the only discussion around fixing the housing crisis is on the supply side, it’s refreshing to see a place that is coming up with both supply and demand solutions.
The other impact of having so much Asian influence flowing into Vancouver, other than food and real estate prices, is that downtown Vancouver now looks a lot like Hong Kong with masses of green glass towers covering the entire surface of downtown and the West End. Luckily, in the process they have also maintained a public walkway around the entire perimeter of downtown, and then there’s always Stanley Park, so that it is possible to see the beauty of one’s surroundings from the water to the mountains. The advantage of so much density is that much of the downtown area is “activated,” as we urban planners say, meaning that there is a nice feeling of there being folks out and about enjoying the city day and night.
Fraser arrives this evening to join us for a week-long visit and I can’t wait to spend time with him as I haven’t seen him since June when we left the Bay Area. He’s also been in Canada since mid-July when he had his own Northern escape up to Georgian Bay in Northern Ontario where Jamie’s family has a summer cottage on an island in Lake Huron. He has been able to work remotely from there for the last three months so I’ve been glad he’s missed the smoke and COVID of the Bay Area, though he will be heading back to SF in a week.
My guess is that while he’s here, we’ll be paying a visit each evening at one of the many breweries that are very popular here, such a contrast from Victoria where breweries were just not a “thing” at all. I think Fraser hasn’t cut his hair for many months so he is going to look like a mountain man with that strawberry blond mane of wavy hair and the big red beard. So, there I’ll be with John and the mountain man, drinking brew. Should be fun! Fraser actually has three co-workers from his company, Cala, who live here so he’ll have others to hang out with when he’s bored with us. It’s interesting that some of these startup tech companies were already doing the global, mobile thing even before Covid.
The other thing Fraser has warned me he will be doing a lot of is getting espressos at local cafe’s. After 3 months on the island, he says he’ll be getting a coffee every morning, noon, and afternoon (clearly, caffeine doesn’t affect him as it does me). We went to JJ Bean this morning and I loved these little breads that they displayed in the shape of pumpkins.
I had a less than fulfilling experience last Monday, and will again this coming Monday, when I did my annual voter information and registration with the senior government classes at Castlemont high school in Oakland. I have done it in person for the past two years and really enjoyed going in, talking to the students, showing a video or two, and then pre-registering or registering them to vote, with the help of other League of Women Voter Oakland folks. This time, it was just me on Zoom and let me tell you, it wasn’t so fun. It really gave me a look in on what teachers are facing this year.
First of all, the students did not turn on their cameras. None of them! So, I was left talking blindly into the void. It was extra hard to get any response even though I am completely interactive in asking them what issues they care about, etc. Then, when it came time to do the pre-registration online, I had no idea if anyone was doing it as I couldn’t see their computers. It was totally unrewarding and I am not looking forward to the next three classes this Monday. Sigh! Imagine the poor teachers who spend their days doing this, day in, day out. My hats off to any of them that can figure out how to connect with students. I fear that it is a completely lost year of education for many students, especially those with the least English and from the poorest households, like the teens I was trying to connect with at Castlemont. What a disaster!
But back to the positive. John and I both submitted our ballots via fax last week, one of the prerogatives of being overseas voters (mail is also allowed but I don’t trust the USPS anymore so figured it was worth paying for the fax). It felt great to get that done and I enjoyed watching the Davids, Axelrod and Gergen, on CNN last night talking to pretty boy Anderson Cooper about how bad things are looking for the R party. While I, like all Dems, have PTSD from 2016, I am secretly hoping for a blood bath. Since the foreign election observers are staying away due to Covid, I’m banking on all the nice middle-aged folks who care about democracy doing their part to oversee the polls in those R-run states with the worst voter suppression. This is the year we need everyone watching to make sure our election actually happens. Vote early!!! Happily, it will be over soon, one way or the other, and then I can start figuring out whether this Canada trip has been critical for my immediate future plans or mostly just fun.
