With some “precipitation” about Julie and I opted to take the “bendy bus” into the district of Downtown Vancouver…
Our day was going to be split into 4 distinct parts..
Part 1 – Vancouver Art Gallery
There were 4 exhibitions to explore in this lovely building…
Before we started looking around lunch called…and there was no doubt where you got your drinks in the Gallery Café…
The first exhibition celebrated the weaving traditions of the Indigenous peoples…
…and the new home for the Gallery intends to use some of these weaving patterns in the copper cladding…
The second exhibition was all about one of the Group of Seven (Canadian landscape artists of the 1920s) JEH MacDonald.
Specifically, the Gallery had been offered some of his original “sketches”…
…and here is an example of that process…
The Gallery then went through a lengthy scientific analysis to establish the provenance of these sketches and this was the outcome…
Fiona Bruce would not have been best pleased…
The 3rd exhibition was focused on the work of Denyse Thomasos, a Trinidadian/Canadian artist who died young at 48…
Her early works were figurative and, IMHO, very compelling, the latter an image of slavery…
She then moved on to an abstract form where imprisonment and living conditions of slavery were her prime drivers…
The final exhibition was dedicated to one of Canada’s most famous artists, Emily Carr…
…who had bequeathed over 150 of her works to the Gallery…
Suitably inspired by all this info we left the Gallery, where the level of “precipitation” had reduced a tad and we commenced on…
Part 2 – Exploring Downtown
Clearly there has been – and continues to be – extensive new build projects (some of which really challenged your visual senses), but it was good to see the heritage buildings that had been preserved too…
We then moved onto …
Part 3 – The Shoreline & Coal Harbour
…where to the East there was a seaplane terminal where both scheduled and tour flights were available…
…and to the West a marina, where, amongst all the white, there was just the hint of colour…
…and a monument to a bygone era…
…and just some indication of how much dosh you actually need to buy one of these vessels…
Getting back home meant an interesting wander through the evening light to catch our bendy-bus…
…and when we alighted back in Burnaby Heights the “precipitation” had returned in style “forcing” us to seek shelter in the closest hostelry…😉🇨🇦 for …
Part 4 – Live Music at the Admiral🎶🎸🥁🎺
Julie and I had some food and drinks before we realised there were some musicians getting set up to play…
In this bar, which felt very much like we were appearing in an episode of Cheers, this 5 piece blues band soon had the place rockin’ so we quickly messaged Rob to come up and join us asap…
… fortunately he was free and we were soon all supping together and lovin’ the live music….and so ended another eventful evening…after we had updated Leith, who had been lecturing until 9 pm…
I think we had had the better day…😉
BTDU 