It could be a native Haida myth that
Vancouver burst from a pine cone, so quickly did it sprout
from a rowdy logger's village into Conde Nast Traveler's
2006 Reader's
Choice top city in the Americas. This socially progressive, green-minded port
city of 600,000-
known in the fi lm industry as "Hollywood North"-zipped through its urban evolution
at warp speed, morphing its lumber-and-shipping-based economy into one celebrating
tourism, food, filmmaking, fashion, and quirky, trendy whatnots. Eight weeks
after it was incorporated on April 6, 1886, Vancouver burned to the ground-then
quickly shot up again, dominated by lumber and the Canadian Pacific Railway until
later, when post-WWII immigrants from Britain and Asia and investors from Hong
Kong added their own spin.
Vancouver isn't exactly Venice, but Vancouverites, spoiled by a temperate climate
that Montrealers like me would die for, thrive as much on water as in their log-jammed
downtown-frequently swimming, kayaking, yachting, and hopping water taxis to
North Vancouver and over to lush and balmy Vancouver Island. Vancouver's virile
vertical skyline is mirrored in its waters, and I'm struckby its resonance with
the towering Douglas fi rs and the Pacific Northwest totem poles. Although the
Modernist glass totems to commerce may loom higher than the beautiful trees whose
lumber birthed this, Canada's third largest city, you feel the awe that inspired
the Salish, Haida, and other Pacifi c Coast native peoples to think "up," erecting
their gorgeous and frightening totem poles. It's impossible not to feel Vancouver's
jaw-dropping natural splendor of ocean, mountains and forest rise up inside you.
Emily Carr felt it. This eccentric B.C. painter and writer (1871-1945) bushwacked
through the wilderness to document decaying Northwest coast totem villages. Her
raw, vivid post-impressionist paintings of totem poles (hanging in the "VAG"-Vancouver
Art Gallery) haunt me for days after seeing them. Thanks to her documentary work,
completed between 1907-1912, I don't have to brave stinging nettles, vampire
mosquitoes, grizzly bears, and ocean gales in tippy dugout canoes to see some
of British Columbia's most awesome totem poles. I have only to roll out of my
grand bed in the historic Fairmont Hotel and stroll down Robson Street to the
new Coal Harbour Seawalk, then to over the Seawall Promenade ringing Stanley
Park.
Stanley Park is so close to-yet so remote in spirit from-Vancouver's hip
caffeine parlors and hemp-oriums, sushi bars, creperies, movie studios, boutique
hotels, beaches, and marinas. This thousand-acre seacoast rainforest was home
to Salish peoples when the eagle reigned king of the air and the whale was lord
of the sea. On these shores bounded by English Bay, the Strait of Georgia, and
Burrard Inlet, Captain George Vancouver was greeted by Whoi- Whoi village natives
in 1792. Near that spot are the fi erce and boldly-painted totems like those
that impassioned Emily Carr. Even on a luminous May day like this one, with azure
views of Vancouver's vitreous skyline, the cedar carved eyes of Dzunukwa the
Giantess seem to be transmitting a life force. I imagine then, with slight horror,
Carr's rain-drenched primal encounter with Dzunukwa, wild woman of the woods.
Alone at dusk in a remote and desolate village, Carr unearthed Dzunukwa's grotesque
stare and eagle-beaked breasts. "I could scarcely wrench my eyes away from the
clutch of those empty sockets," Carr wrote. "The power that I felt was not in
the thing itself, but in some tremendous force behind it, that the carver had
believed in."
The spiritual intensity surrounding so much Vancouver lore makes my leisurely
shopping, dining, wine-bibbing, and latte-sipping dawdle around Granville Island
Public Market, Kool Kitsilano, and the old bricked streets of Gastown feel like
a dream. On my refreshing walk north along the Seawall Promenade, I'm joined
by a happy brigade of bikers and bladers all the way to Siwash Rock. Lashed by
the waters of the Gulf of Georgia, this curious basalt stack topped with a hairy
tuft of Douglas fi r, a famous Vancouver landmark, does perhaps look like the
young Squamish brave frozen in stone it's said to be. As Vancouver gears up for
hosting the Winter Olympics in 2010, this strikes me as a dramatic spot to erect
a totem to the diverse group of Vancouverites who have made their mark: Coast
Salish; Squamish; Musqueam; Sechelts; Old Empire Brits; post WWII emigres from
Australia to Zimbabwe; the Asian influx; and sub-tribal foodies, filmbuffs, hikers,
bird-watchers, bear-watchers, yogis, playwrights, nudists, et al. The First Nations
aboriginal peoples, here for 10,000 years, will crowd the bottom and crown the
top.
But they'll have to stop there. A totem pole erected to Vancouver, like the
city itself and its awesome Douglas firs, just keeps on growing.
I love hotels with a sense of local history and atmosphere, and in Vancouver that means the grand old Fairmont Hotel and the Sylvia. The Fairmont, built in 1939 to attract Canadian Pacific Railway tourists, is newly restored, with a state-of-the art spa and the city's best wine bar, all right across from the Vancouver Art Gallery and Robson Square. A heritage landmark built in 1912, the Sylvia, located on English Bay beside Stanley Park, exudes an old-world charm and boasts the city's first cocktail bar. As for extraordinary boutique hotels, it's The Listel, deemed "Vancouver's most artful hotel" for the curated art hung in its guest rooms and its showcase of Northwest Coast artist.
Anything you crave, you can find in Vancouver. For omelettes with attitude and celebrity sightings, try the Elbow Room. For Northern Mexican, Las Margaritas is inspired, and for vegetarian salads and wok dishes so is Naam. Tomato Fresh Food Cafe is a Cambie Street health food mecca in a colorful old barbershop setting. Capones in Yaletown is the place for elegant Mediterranean and lively jazz, and for seafood with a view, try The Dockside in the Granville Island Hotel and The Fish House in Stanley Park. For delectable Indian cuisine, Vij's is the last word.
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