vancouver

Dates traveled: 2013; 2014; 2015; May 1-6, 2017; November 2-5, 2018

Having lived a couple years on Vancouver Island, I’ve been to Vancouver many times – I’d guess about a dozen. On one of my first few times there, I talked with Justin about how familiarity impacts how we see and feel about a place – that all of our context jumbles together and shifts and infuses what place means to us. He thought you got the truest sense of a place on first visit, but I feel like there is no true or unimpeded view: there’s only your own head, coming into contact with the air around it.

When exploring new areas of a city already-visited, there’s a neural explosion that differs from a completely new arrival to a place: when experiencing “Vancouver” for the first time, the slate is filled solely by expectations of what I will experience; subsequently, expectations shift in line with previous experience, so altering my perception of the place as a whole takes more work – there is a more solidified internal definition of place that these new experience re-wire.

With more visits, the city has come alive as more than its initial fragmented impression on my mind. There is still much more of Vancouver to be explored. The possibility of what Vancouver can and will become remains open, as everywhere always is.

Perhaps my familiarity with parts of the place from previous visits allows my senses the comfort they require to overcome the initial assault with which newness confronts them. In my mind, Vancouver has diversified from a relatively whole concept of place to a multi-layered conglomeration of neighbourhoods, each distinctly joint to make the city-itself, an ongoing play of dynamics.

Because I’ve visited Vancouver a number of times, it’s hard to write about in the same way I’d write about a place I’ve only visited once. For places like that, I might re-cap some of the highlights and impressions I had, then reflect on it overall. I might notice the note that the green-tinged condo windows on hi-rises near the harbour seem very Toronto or that the big-treed inner city park screams Pacific Ocean.

But it’s also different from a place I’ve lived. I didn’t develop a community in Vancouver. I didn’t belong. I was always a stranger wandering around, mostly alone, mostly disenfranchised from a place that looked and smelled familiar but in which I wasn’t quite home. Instead it has some bled associations with Victoria, where I did live, and the way my life was at that point. It also takes on a symbolic significance of west coast and all that means to me.

Here’s what I can tell you about Vancouver: its skyline looks more and more like Toronto as it tries to cram people into the downtown space near the harbour. The weather is temperate but gloomy for a few months of the year, with rain replacing snow, for the most part, over winter months. There are beaches and oceanside enclaves shadowed under hi-rises. As expensive as housing is (second most expensive in North America, after San Francisco), food might be cheaper than other cities of comparable size.

What I like Vancouver for most is its proximity. Beauty surrounds and imprints the space. There is the possibility of variety – a silent soliloquy after a Saturday morning drive just down the highway, a half-planned weekend trip to a nearby island, distinct from the busy city bustle.

Vancouver itself has many liminal spaces. These transitional areas between neighbourhoods form such tiny pockets that Vancouver’s urban density becomes hard to miss. Though inlaid tightly together, every neighbourhood remains distinct from areas only a few blocks away. Though adjacent places share some characteristics, their individual identities emanate from a hard to define uniqueness of character and space.

I wonder how much longer this’ll last, and if only my memory and expectations are holding onto these distinctions, when in reality for most people it’s already spread out into same.

Sometimes the most important thing you can learn on a trip is that you need to revisit; even weather makes things different.

On my first few trips to Vancouver, I stayed mainly in the downtown core, near the waterfront, near streets I’ve heard of and places I recognized. It oriented me to the mood and layout of the city, but it also left me feeling fatigued, like I couldn’t fully comprehend my environment without time to process it.

One of the reasons I wanted to stay in familiar areas was because I felt spending so little time somewhere new wouldn’t allow me to immerse myself. Of course immersion is mostly a joke. We’re all tourists, pretending that we belong.

On my last visit to Vancouver – my second since moving back to Ontario – I did something a bit different. I didn’t do much.

I stayed in the Granville area most of the time – not my favourite spot – and took it easy. I did spend several hours at Stanley park one of the days because I’d been meaning to spend more time there. I’d only been once before, and I think it was only for about an hour.

When I lived on the coast I always told myself (and others) that the trees and foresty things was nicer on the island, so when I’m in Vancouver I may as well see the big city stuff that I didn’t get to encounter as much. But the park has its perks, even aside from its adjacency to the big-ish city, the promise of being able to escape without going too far.

So I got lost there one afternoon, visited the Oilers bar on another day, and almost every day enjoyed the myriad of cheap pizza options near my hotel room. No amazing insights, no epiphanies, nothing completely new dawned on me. Just pretty trees and nice weather and a variety of local beers I hadn’t had before.

On one of my last days, I swiped a Blue Buck coaster to satisfy my innate urge to be nostalgic. But I didn’t order the beer to drink because I knew that in the years since I’ve drank it my tastes have changed, and that drinking it again wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t like it like I once did.

The lesson probably is (if I need one) is I may be happy visiting or moving or dreaming of Vancouver or places like it. I may act on it and it may work out and be what I need it to be. There are no guarantees because it’s not the same as any time I’ve visited before, and what’s changed even more quickly and significantly is me.