Mon 20 Feb 2006
One of the things I really like about living in downtown Vancouver is the ways the city has of keeping you in time with its rhythm. The office buildings disgorge at 430 and the streets are filled with suits and skirts popping into HMV to buy a disk they didn’t know they wanted until they saw it. Another example is the horns on the Hydro Building that I (used) to hear moaning “O Canada” across the skyline. It is connective. It is visceral. It is…. kind of parental.
Vancouver even tells me when I should think about going to bed. I don’t, but every time I hear the 9 o’clock gun I think:
1) it is 9 o’clock
2) I should think about going to bed
3) what am I twelve? I ain’t goin’ to bed yet!
4) Oh, isn’t that sweet. Vancouver really cares!
5) Pirates… or the French! “Heart of Oak! Rule Brittania!”
Well ok, not neccessarily in that order.
Still, soon I will move to New Westminster where my father was born, his father and his father before that. The cannons on the river are filled with concrete and I have to wait until the Hyack festival to hear any really good black powder explosions. Oh well. I think the trains go by at the same time each day.
yup, that’s right. 2am shunting of trains along the rail track at the foot of columbia st.; skytrains once a minute, the constant din of river traffic - ah, the noise of new westminster. It’s home!
Anon, he’ll be comin’ round the mountain: a fourth generation Royal City man, aristocratic pooch in one arm and artistic, intelligent wife-to-be on the other. French pirates bedamned — Will’s headin’ home to roost!