steveston

In the southwest corner of what is now Richmond is an old fishing village. This fishing village is still very much about fish but my guess is the majority of its economy now comes from tourism with fishing continuing to dwindle. On this day both were seemingly joined at the Fisherman’s Wharf where there was a boardwalk with dozens of boats selling fresh and terrifying-looking fish.

I wonder what people who like fish think of this smell. If I ate animals, the first victims I’d choose would be fish, but it’s because they seem the most unlike me, not because they look tasty. They look kind of alien, and they sort of are, with different ways of processing air and only living in what strikes me as the “other” part of the world. There’s above ground, then there’s underwater.

I’m probably drawn to the water for the great unknown. Maybe it’s also why I travelled to Iceland and why I’m planning a trip to the Territories. The ocean is the closest thing to outer space on earth. We still haven’t figured out great ways to explore it. Before we colonize other planets, I wonder if we’d first turn our attention to designing structures that live underwater, if the oceans ended up being more habitable. For now, we kill and eat what comes close enough to the surface or that we can trap on the ocean floor.

Steveston really drives home that it’s a place of history and museums. It apparently was voted best neighbourhood in metro Vancouver. I think I seem so negative about the place not because it wasn’t interesting or pretty, just when you hear about a place as being the best place in what I consider the nicest metro area in Canada and possibly North America, your expectations are going to be unreasonable.

This cannery is somewhat surprisingly a national historic site. I guess it was once the biggest in the province. The town grew because of all the salmon that came through this arm of the Fraser River. I’m no expert in national historic sites, and I’m sure this was very important, but it seemed like the most boring museum that still wasn’t any cheaper than other museums. We spent our time in the gift shop and used the bathroom. They sold postcards.

Once you got around the fishing part, which was hard to do, Steveston seemed like a quiet town nothing like Vancouver but close enough to be linked by periodic public transit. Still, it’s hard to imagine what would attract people to that particular area if they didn’t grow up there or didn’t love fish. It had a bit of a historic feel, which isn’t as common on the west coast as in central or eastern Canada. There’s a lot of filming done in the area too – maybe people venture there trying to boost their career as an extra, but as I write this there’s a film crew across the street, so it’s not like there aren’t opportunities for that in the city.

The main street in town is called Moncton, probably cause the ‘founder’ of the town was from Moncton, New Brunswick. Go figure. Town seemed very different ethnically from Richmond, which it is technically within. Even though there is a historic Japanese population in Steveston, it felt very white, whereas Richmond is over half Chinese. In fact, Richmond has the highest proportion of Chinese people in Canada and the highest proportion of immigrants in Canada, both of which make Steveston – as a part of Richmond – feel quite different. Maybe it’s unrelated, but people voting a white neighbourhood that’s within a very non-white area as best neighbourhood in the region feels kind of racist.

I wonder if it’s more prevalent to have excess warnings in tourist areas, either because people on vacation can be stupid or they just have no understanding of that place. I’ve noticed in Newfoundland too that the signs were pretty aggressive in how they signaled danger, depicting people getting engulfed in waves or falling off a cliff.

Anywhere I’ve ever lived or been on the coast advertised whale watching as a main attraction. From my understanding, you pay hundreds of dollars to be boated out near a pod of whales and if you’re lucky might see them poke their heads out of the water. I think whales are cool, but I also think these things are tourists traps. I think we should probably just leave the whales alone.

Ah, the waterfront. One of these days I’m going to break my ankle from walking on driftwood like a tightrope or being overconfident with my climbing on slippery rocks that vacillate between being above and below the tide. Getting close, especially when the waves aren’t too high, lets you hear the lapping sound, growing to a roar when the waves pick up. That sound gives me a simultaneous calm and dread at the infiniteness of the universe and how tiny I am and will always be.

I know I’m missing all the finer points of Steveston but what can I say, when you only spend a few hours someplace, you take what you can get and that becomes your impression. My impression is of a place that feels a lot farther from Vancouver (and Richmond) than it is and that if you really liked fishing and museums about fishing you’d probably have a whale of a day. Otherwise, it does earn the ‘quaint’ label, and evidently people like to visit it, but other neighbourhoods in the region, and other fishing-heavy communities on Vancouver Island, felt more memorable to me with less hype.