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A walkway of cherry blossoms

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, cherry blossoms, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , on April 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »

This time of year, one of the hidden wonders of downtown Vancouver is the Burrard Street Skytrain station. On the walkway above the ticket level, the cherry trees are blossoming. Overhead, the skyscrapers loom, and the homeless are huddled in blankets less on the sidewalks than a block away, but, on that walkway, both are hidden from view, and you might almost be in the country. As in a classical Chinese garden, the walkway soon makes you forget the urban setting.

Today, I took half an hour from my Saturday errands to enjoy the sight, despite the chill of the day. The cold spring we’ve had so far has stunted the blossoms slightly, but the white-laden branches still managed to leave me with a catch in my throat and an unexpected lightness in my chest. I never notice any particular depression during winter, but the blossoming of the cherry trees – the first signs of spring aside from the blossoming of the broom and the odd hawthorn – never fail to leave me in a hushed awe, and grateful for the sight.

And today, a white-mustached busker on the ticket level was playing Mozart on a violin, his echoing notes providing a plaintive background to the spectacle of the blossoms.

At first, I stood at the top of the stairs to the walkway, alternating my sight between staring down the archway of gnarled branches and blossoms and focusing on the individual blossoms closest to me and their delicate perfection.

In the mid-distance, a bridal party was having pictures taken. Even from a distance, I could see her bare shoulders were red with the cold.

When the bridal party was finished, I began to walk, slowly, and with much turning from side to side and, even once or twice, right around. If I wanted a change from the blossoms, I could gaze down into the garden at the ticket level and see the other flowering trees just coming into bloom.

At the far end, I climbed to street level, and walked back away I came. A few people were thrusting cameras blindly up at the blossoms, apparently hoping for the random luck of a good shot, but no one spoke. Even the two or three couples were taking turns photographing each other were silent and intent, although smiling. I considered a comment or two myself, but decided not to spoil the moment.

On my second circuit, I noticed that the heightened wind created by the skyscraper canyons was starting to shake off some of the petals. They drifted like snowflakes, moving sideways as much as down. They made me think of how short the cherry blossom season is – always too short – and the thought added sadness to the scene that added the beauty of the falling petals.

Finally, the cold of the day drove me towards my journey home. But even the downtown tunnel of the Skytrain and the dinginess of the car I traveled in could only lessen my mood a little. I had had one of the aesthetic highpoints of the season, and I was grateful and still carried much of the mood it created.

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Spring arrives in Vancouver

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Personal, running, spring, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , on February 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Looking at temperatures across Canada, I see a depressing number of minus signs. The sole exception is the southwest corner of British Columbia, where we are already enjoying temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. Several weeks ago, we had our last snowfall, but now we’re starting to see the first signs of spring. Does anyone wonder why those of us in Vancouver have a tendency to phone friends and family in places like Calgary and Winnipeg to have a nice, warm gloat?

Many city people probably pay minimal attention to the seasons. Except for short dashes to their cars, they spent most of their time in heated buildings. However, for those of us whose daily exercise takes them out into the elements, the coming of spring has a certain urgency – although far less, granted, than it does for a farmer.

For one thing, running or cycling on snow is either difficult or impossible. For a runner like me, it’s like running on sand, with every kilometer feeling like two or more. And, like sand, it’s hard on the ankles. Add unplowed sidewalks and the need to contest the streets with cars, many of which lack all-season tires, let alone snow tires (Vancouverites are almost in as deep denial about receiving snow as they are about rain), and getting any sort of exercise becomes an ordeal. The fact that sweat pants bind my legs is just a winter torture unique to me.

Then, for morning exercisers like me, there’s the dark. Cars full of sleep-deprived, caffeine-motivated drivers are dangerous at the best of times, but trying to dodge them before sunrise adds a new dimension of horror, especially when you suddenly find yourself tiptoeing across a patch of black ice, waving your arms wildly and trying not to scream in panic as you try to keep upright.

But, somewhere in the last ten days, spring has definitely gained a hold. It was like trench warfare for a while – a tiny advance here, followed by an immediate setback, then the cycle repeating somewhere else – but at some indeterminate point, winter lost its grip.

Now, the only remains of snow are the mounds heaped up by snowplows – and they are diminishing everyday. The sun rose today just after 7am, meaning enough light to see by (and be seen) exists by 6:30, and the roads and sidewalks were mercifully ice-free. Crocuses and daffodils are thrusting up shoots of desperate green on the grass. In Dunbar, the first buds are showing, which means that, around our townhouse, they will appear within a week.

I’m not a victim of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and of course Vancouver winters are laughable by the standards of the rest of Canada. All the same, in December and January, I had the sense of keeping my head buried in my work, hunkering down in our living room as though it was a bunker in a war zone and waiting for better days.

Now those days have come, I feel a sense of relief, and a renewed need to be up and doing. With all these first signs of spring, the first cherry blossoms should be less than a month away – and then I’ll know that winter is gone beyond any recall.

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Running the summer out

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, exercise, running, summer, Uncategorized, Vancouver on August 30, 2007| Leave a Comment »

When I think, late summer is my favorite time of the year for a morning run. At 7AM, the air has the first tang of cold in the air, just enough to be bracing and not enough to be uncomfortable. Often, a hint of moisture is in the air, although not enough yet for a morning dew. And, unless the last rain is more than a week or two in the past, the air is fresher than usual, because more people are on holidays and aren’t driving to work.

Just as importantly, the area around Vancouver is at its greenest – literally, I mean, and not in the environmental sense. With the right mixture of rain and sun, like we had this year, the trees and bushes of the region have a green so rich it almost seems about to quiver.

It helps, too, that, by the end of the summer, I’m usually at my most fit. As a result, I’m running at a reasonable speed with minimal effort, full of the adrenalin-induced delusion that there is no work, domestic, or relationship problem that I can’t handle.

And, this year, the feeling of healthy is particularly strong and satisfying. For one thing, I’ve been cross-training since the first week of March this year, instead of the end of May, so I’m fitter than usual. More importantly, this time last year, the doctor was solemnly telling me that my running days were over, and I’ve triumphantly proved him wrong. Instead of feeling fat and out of sorts (and having to go to my high school reunion that way last year), I’ve regained a deep sense of optimism and more of a bounce in my stride.

Next week, I know, everything will change. With the passing of Labour Day, people will be back from holidays and the roads will be half-gridlocked again. Suddenly, people will feel that summer is over, and be angrily getting back to business. But, for the next few days, the golden time remains.

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Baby crow season

Posted in architecture, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, crows, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver on August 5, 2007| 3 Comments »

Since I live beside a green belt, one of my markers of the year is when this year’s crop of newly-fledged crows become independent. The Vancouver area is in the middle of the season now, and it never fails to entertain me.

The first sign that the baby crows have left the nest is the echo of their plaintive cries as they try to convince their parents to regurgitate for them. The more aggressive of the babies go so far as to push themselves underneath their parents’ beaks. At first, many of the adults oblige, but, after a week or two, they keep their beaks resolutely shut, no matter how the babies position themselves. Once, I even saw an adult thrown off balance by a baby’s insistence. And there’s always a few parents who do their best to lose junior at this stage.

Eventually, though, the young ones grudgingly accept their independence. They come together in groups of four to twelve birds, all identifiable as young ones by the narrowness of their bodies and their slightly shrill cries. Like human teenagers, they tend to do everything together, the flock chasing after one who has sighted something that’s possibly edible and squabbling as they brush against each other in midflight or land too close together. They seem to congregate where the food is plentiful, such a shopping mall, and, for a few months at any rate, their elders seem to cede such places to them.

At this stage, the young crows are clumsy – which isn’t surprising, considering how fast most birds grow in their first few months. They simply haven’t had time to learn coordination in the middle of their constant growth. Frequently, they’ll try to land on a branch too small for their weight, and lose their footing as the branch whips up and down. They haven’t learned, either, to coordinate hopping along the ground and keeping an eye out around them, so they sometimes trip themselves.

Unfortunately, too, they don’t understand cars, and some of them always die each year before they can learn. However, crows are adaptable enough that many of them learn quickly enough to survive. In another month or so, they’ll have left their small flocks for the great host of crows that roosts about six or seven miles from where I live, and become at least tentative adults.

Many people despite crows as vermin, and no doubt I would feel the same if I were a farmer. But as an urbanite, I find myself impressed by how adaptable crows can be to human changes to the environment. Whatever else you can say, crows are survivors, and I always enjoy their first self-taught lessons in how to get on in the world.

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The bazaar of the palette

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Granville Island, Personal, public markets, tourism, Uncategorized, Vancouver on July 22, 2007| Leave a Comment »

When I was six or seven, I was fascinated by the promise of stores. They seemed full of undefined but definite wonder, capable of containing anything. Their potential seemed unlimited, but, the reality always fell short of my imagination. Even the magic shop at Disneyland only sold tricks rather than brass lamps with their very own genie or antique bedroom furniture that was a gateway to a world of adventure. Nowadays, I don’t expect such wonders to be near at hand, except very occasionally in a well-stocked book or music store – which is why the Granville Island market is always a pleasant surprise.

It would be easy to dismiss Granville Island as a nothing more than an extended ploy to separate yuppies from their bank accounts as painlessly as possible. And maybe if I visited with any regularity, I would come to see the market that way. But, visiting only once or twice a year, I can preserve my view of it as a bazaar of potential delights.

Part of my enjoyment is the setting – a chaos of comings and goings in which pedestrians stroll unimpeded and cars give way on the irregularly angled streets. Stores come and go in the unlikelilest places, so I could almost believe that they magically shifted locales. On the docks, water taxis are continually disembarking people from other parts of False Creek. In the outdoor sitting areas, seagulls wander with psychotic gleams in their eyes, secure in their knowledge that they have the right to any food they recognize as such.

And every fifteen minutes or so, the buskers (many of them surprisingly good) move on to a location. Rumor has it that, twenty years ago, their numbers would include Loreena McKennitt when she was in town. Now, they include many of the mainstays of the local folk scene, as well as the occasional musician. Some years, too, the Fringe Festival has had small plays performed in various corners. Something is always happening or about to happen at the market – or, at least, it seems that way.

Some of the market tables include crafts, but the main appeal of the market is its selection of food. I’m far from being a foodie, despite the half dozen or so special menus I sometimes prepare, but, more than any other public market in the greater Vancouver area, Granville Island comes close to fulfilling my imaginative expectations.

Besides the fresh produce, the market vendors sell an endless variety of food, ranging from the raw to the prepared. Wild salmon (no one in BC would admit to selling farmed salmon), crepes, locally blended coffees, dolmathes, cassava chips, smoked almonds, flax rolls, maple syrup toffee, tzatziki, pinots and zifandels – I can’t begin to list the types of food offered with anything like completeness.

Pastas, breads, and chocolate desserts are especially well-represented, but, no matter what your palate or ethnic preferences, you have a good chance of finding it somewhere on Granville Island. If you have the patience, you could assemble a ready-made meal that cost the same but was far more varied than anything you could find in the nearby restaurants. Alternatively, a well-dressed homeless person who kept their poise could feed well by going around to all the booths and taking the proferred samples as they talked seriously to the clerks about the various offerings. Just wending your way through the aisles is enough to turn you gluttonous.

Usually, I get away with only spending twenty dollars or so, but I could easily spend thirty times that if I indulged in every impulse that came my way at Granville Island. Not that I haven’t had many unexpected and delightful gourmet meals after a wander through the market, but it is the array of exotic possibilities, not actually possessing them that fascinate me. Mostly, I am content to look, sample sparingly, and buy little. The experience, which is free, is worth more to me than anything I could buy, no matter how it melted on the tongue or lingered on the palette.

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Taking transit

Posted in Bruce Byfield, buses, Personal, public transit, skytrain, Vancouver on July 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I wish I could say that I take public transit for environmental reasons. Environmentalism is trendy, and I could earn cheap social points by being green. Unfortunately, I can’t claim so much credit. The truth is, I prefer public transit because it gives me a block of time to read. When I’m not reading, the bus or the Skytrain is a perfect place for both thinking and people-watching.

Somewhere on each trip, I almost always use the time on transit simply to think. While I’m on transit, I may be purposeful, but, unlike in a car, I’m not responsible for that purpose. I can sit back, and let my mind wander. without guilt. Moreover, I’m doing it in an unfamiliar environment, with other unfamiliar ones passing rapidly by me outside, and unfamiliar environments often lead to new thoughts. Ride a bus for half an hour, I sometimes think, and I can often find a solution to any problem that’s on my mind.

Flying is even better, because it’s stranger and longer, but transit has the advantage of being cheaper and more accessible. Once or twice, I’ve even ridden a block or two past my stop, just because I was in the middle of thinking through an especially knotty problem and didn’t want to interrupt the process.

If I have a laptop with me, I can input my thoughts, so long as I’ve kept the battery charged. However, closing down a laptop can make me miss my stop if I’m not careful, and caring an open computer through a crowd is a good way to break it.

More often, I simply carry a notebook. The only disadvantage is that my handwriting has degenerated through marking student papers until it looks like an obscure style of cuneiform written in the dark. Nor does the motion of the bus or Skytrain car help. Later, I often can’t transcribe what I’ve written except for a few words here and there. Most, I frankly have to guess at through context.

At other times, I unabashedly gawk at the human parade around me. Generally-speaking, the people who ride transit do not represent a random distribution of the population. As a sample, they’re skewed to the teenaged and the old, the poor and the ethnic (by which I mean, anyone from a culture that isn’t obsessed with the idea of a personal vehicle). These populations are apt to be more colorful than the average suburb or city dweller: the young because they are asserting themselves, the old because they don’t care about fashion, the poor because they can afford to care, and the ethnic because they have their own sense of style.

If you want to hear the latest concerns among teenagers, or get a sense of different speech patterns, all you have to do is ride and eavesdrop shamelessly. What I hear can be embarrassing, like the time I heard a man pleading with his lover not to break up with him via a cell-phone, but it will be a genuine slice of life of the kind that would make short story writers drool. From people discussing their plans for the weekend, giving Twitter-like updates on their cell phones to families swarming with young children and cyclists still dusty from their ride, you can find a bit of everything on transit.

And these are just the ordinary riders. If you could the genuine eccentrics, the bikers who have lost their driver’s licenses and the homeless who sometimes ride for free in the downtown core, then the people-watching never palls. The one drawback is that you don’t always see the end of the drama. I still wonder, sometimes, whether the shoplifter I saw wearing half a dozen shirts and carrying their clothes-hangers was ever noticed by the transit police, or how well the busker with his thirty-second balloon show did. Nor do I know just who the man strumming a guitar for the driver was the other night, although from the way people acted, he might be someone moderately famous.

People-watching never completely palls. If nothing else, it’s a basic precaution for riding. Without being paranoid, it only seems sensible to be aware of those around you on transit, especially at night. However, the one rule you need to remember is: “Don’t make eye contact.”
Not that is, if you want to avoid being dragged unwillingly into a conversation. The eccentrics on the bus are often lonely, and even meeting their eyes for a moment can encourage them to tell you their life story in real time or in repetitive, rambling detail.

Of course, transit isn’t always smooth riding. If I’m foolish enough to travel during rush hour, I can learn more about other people’s personal hygiene and smoking habits than I ever wanted to know. Mostly, though, riding transit is so rich in people and thoughts that being in a private car seems an impoverished experience by comparison.

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A fanatic of the festival

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, folk music, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, vancouverfolkfestival on July 15, 2007| Leave a Comment »

So here I am at home, propped up in a pool of my own indolence, my skin alive with the ultra-violet of a day outside and blissed out from ten hours of hearing some of my favorite music live. This weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the Vancouver Folk Festival, one of the few times in the year that I genuinely relax as opposed to running errands or fulfilling social obligations in my spare time. The folk festival is the nearest thing to religion we have,” a friend once said, and, over the years, I’ve found that true. And, after this weekend, how I’m going to reconcile myself to another week of heavy keyboard pounding is a bit of a puzzlement to me just now.

What makes the folk festival so special in my year? Partly, it’s the timelessness of the event. We live far enough away from Jericho Park, the beach-side venue for the festival, that we usually only get there on the weekend of the festival. The few times we have, the park has seemed ghostly and deserted. We’re used to seeing it full of thousands of people: the straights, the activists, the lesbians, the families, the hippies-for-the-weekend, and all the rest, all dancing and staggering from stage to stage while the ducks collect in the remotest corner of the marsh, quacking nervously at the invasion and the crows and gulls gather, seemingly delirious at the unexpected smorgasbords.

In my mind, Jericho Park is always that way, so that I can barely distinguish one year from another. If I look closely, I notice that the average of attendees is rising (but not mine, naturally). And, if I strain, I can remember a few days when we huddled under umbrellas and wore toques, grimly determined to get our money’s worth even if we froze or caught colds.

Mostly, though, the festival leaves the impression of one continuous long day of sunshine and salt-ridden air and plants. Sometimes, like this year, the sky is full of the billowing clouds that I sometimes think only exist on the ceilings of Renaissance palaces. Other times, the sky is an unbroken stretch of blue glimpsed through the branches of the trees as I lie back in the grass a short distance from a stage, or an oven that seems to flash-bake the grass as we make weary dashes between the too-few scraps of shade, feeling like survivors of a trek across Death Valley.

At times, we’ve frankly chosen a workshop to attend on the basis of whether it was in the shade — and that, too, adds to the feeling of timelessness. Several times each year, I gaze up a stage, half-unsure what year it is. And with the people around me looking the same, and sometimes the same performers on stage, that’s hardly surprising.

Another thing I appreciate about the festival: It’s not Top 40, and you won’t find most of the performers on iTunes, either. You may hear a sarcastic reference to Led Zeppelin in a group’s between-song patter, or hear someone like Billy Bragg explain that he plays the festival “because even hippies deserve to hear good music,” but that’s about as close as you get to mainstream mediocrity at the festival.

Rather, one of the most enduring aspects of the festival is the discovery of new performers. It was at the folk festival that we first saw Stan Rogers, with his brother Garnet playing the fiddle and dancing as the sunset turned the sky red. It was the folk festival where we first heard the sardonic lyrics of Leon Rosselson and learned to appreciate the lyrics of Eric Bogle. We first saw OysterBand inject a bit of hard rock and showmanship at the festival, and heard Ray Wylie Hubbard’s bluesy mix. Some years are better than others, but every year leads to one or two minor discoveries. And if there’s ever an hour when the workshops seem less than intriguing, we can always choose at random to broaden our minds.

From the traddest of the trad to hard driving punk-folk, the entire spectrum of alternative music is available. You might suffer from musical overload, but boredom isn’t a problem.

And, if this is not enough, the festival is one of the few places where you can hear alternate political views taken for granted. Folk music, as the name implies, is about people and their problems. You don’t hear anyone singing about the joys of capitalism or the pleasure of wielding a CEO’s arbitrary tyranny, because these subjects would only seem suitable to those with a lack of empathy or imagination — and such people don’t become artists of any sort. And should you think that sounds humorless, just drop by one of the sessions where Utah Phillips, the emeritus of the festival, is holding forth about riding the rails or talking about old union figures like Joe Hill or British Columbia’s own Ginger Goodwin. If he doesn’t leave you simultaneously rolling on the grass with laughter, angry at what the history books and newspapers leave out and matter-of-factly convinced of the simple righteousness of his opinions — well, give your address so I can send flowers to your funeral. You can only be dead and too busy to have noticed.

None of this is to suggest that the festival is flawless. I could do without running the gauntlet of ticky-tacky hucksters to get to the gate (although they’re no fault of the festival, to be fair). Inside, the food is over-priced, and, at times, the festival staff picks acts more for their activist credentials than for artistry (I prefer to have both, or neither). And, this year, the outdoor atmosphere was marred by the addition of a giant screen to one side of center stage, which was used to run commercials (excuse me, I mean “public service announcements”) between sets at the evening concerts.

Yet, although I grouse about such things, all of them are too petty to actually spoil the festival. Despite such things, the Vancouver Folk Festival rises effortlessly above all misgivings, as much through luck as any planning by the organizers. Perhaps it’s simply big enough that I can avoid most of what I dislike, even, when, like this year, it’s crippled by debt and on a reduced budget.

But, one way or the other, the festival remains a bubble of timelessness that I return to again and again. It does me good — and, perhaps, makes me good, too.

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Designing buildings for the climate

Posted in architecture, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, education, environmentalism, Personal, Public Knowledge Project, Vancouver on July 12, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I spent today at the Public Knowledge Project’s conference at Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre, interviewing people and lining up contacts for future articles. Student and instructor, I’ve spent considerable time at Harbour Centre, so going there always stirs memories. But, like most people at the conference, what preoccupied me was the fact that the air-conditioning failed in a humid heat wave in which temperatures were as high as 37 degrees Celsius. Whether the failure was a brownout downtown or confined to the campus, I’m not sure, but it started me wondering: Why doesn’t North American industrial culture ever build for the climate?

The question is worth asking. Place a few hundred people in an overheated, airless lecture theater is a recipe for extreme discomfort at the least. If anyone is old or has a heart condition, it could mean illness or death.

Fortunately, nothing serious happened so far as I could see, but, even so, the inconvenience was there. Many people were skipping discussions they had traveled to hear, so they could stand in the lobby and chugalug the free juice and pop provided by the conference sponsors. Campus security had to rush around more because the open doors brought many of the homeless in (something that doesn’t bother me, but bothers security staff immensely). Students were skipping classes, and campus staff were sweating and short-tempered – all because the summer heat wasn’t taken into account when the building was renovated to house the university. Apparently, the assumption was that the air-conditioning would always be available, and that the ability to open windows would be a security risk.

To be fair, the renovators had the disadvantage of having to work with an older building that was probably designed for the climate of southern England, rather than the Pacific coast of Canada. But Harbour Centre is far from the only example of local construction unsuitable to the climate.

Few roads in the greater Vancouver area are higher in the middle so that the rain for which the climate is notorious will run along the sides instead of creating giant puddles for cars to hydroplane through. And thanks to all the imitators of native son Arthur Erikson, local architects continue to use concrete in buildings that the rain can eventually erode – that is, when they’re not imitating styles suitable for the desert conditions of California and using flat roofs. For years now, leaky condos have plagued the area, and four-story buildings shrouded in plastic and scaffolding are still sprouting up everywhere like multi-colored mushroom.

It shouldn’t be difficult, while architectural students are learning about the tensile strengths of different materials, to teach them some basics about designing for specific climates. Much of the matter is common sense. Yet, so far as I can tell, this basic consideration is far from their minds when they sit down to design. Nor does anyone hold them to account. Instead, the public suffers and shells out for repairs.

Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to drink another three or four liters of Gatorade to restore some moisture to my dessicated tissues.

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A kindness of ravens

Posted in birdwatching, Bruce Byfield, environmentalism, Personal, ravens, simonfraseruniversity, Vancouver on July 9, 2007| 1 Comment »

Yesterday, I was at the Commercial Drive Skytrain station when I heard familiar querulous noises in the trees on the other side of the tracks. I scanned the trees, but the bright sunlight made the shadows so deep that I was on the train before I could confirm that a raven was present. It was shifting uneasily, trying to keep its grip on a branch that was too slender to carry its weight. Just before the train pulled out, I saw another one on top of the highest of the scrub alders that line the slope of the railway cut that the Skytrain runs through. As always when I see a raven, I felt unexpectedly cheered. If I were superstitious, I would have said the sighting was a good omen.

Considering ravens’ reputations as eaters of carrion – Old English poetry is full of references to ravens and wolves feeding on fallen warriors after a battle – this reaction may seem strange. I can only explain it by two facts: First, that having parrots in my living room for over two decades has left me absolutely bird-mad, and, second, that, when you look at raven, an aware individual looks back at you. That makes ravens spooky, and a small piece of wonder.

Some people say that they have trouble telling the difference between ravens and crows. To them, I can only reply that they can’t ever have seen a raven. In both size and sentience, ravens far surpass crows – and crows are undoubtedly one of the brighter species around, too. The first time that I saw ravens, I had no doubt whatsoever that I was seeing something more than a big crow.

That first encounter was on the western side of the Rockies, a few days after I had graduated, when I was on a camping trip that was really an excuse to visit a young woman who had briefly attended my high school and had written to me ever since. We were driving around a bend in the highway when I saw two ravens sitting on a concrete divider on the side of the road. As the car approached, they cocked their heads at us, then glided away above the creek bed below them, moving with a deliberation that immediately fascinated me.

A decade later, a pair of ravens were nesting in the green belt around Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain. I first saw them one fog-bound morning in fall as Trish and I were driving to work: two low-flying shadows, their characteristic kronk amplified by the fog into something eerie. After we parked, I saw one perched on top of a blue Honda Civic, its wings draped over the windows as if it were resting after an effort to carry the vehicle away. A while later, I saw it on the jade boulder in the reflecting pond, reminding me of Emily Carr’s “Big Raven.”

For the next few years while I was working as a teaching assistant and sessional instructor, I would see the pair when I walked around campus or went for a run on the trails. Often, in spring, they would often be fleeing a mob of crows who were defending their nests and their young.

Once, I saw them behind Horizon’s Restaurant in Centennial Park on the west side of Burnaby Mountain. One was perched on a railing, standing sentry while the other was dumpster-diving. In the case of this raven, “diving” was more than alliteration: it really did go beak-first into the bin, vocalizing furiously as it sorted through the garbage. Then it would poke its head up as if breaking the surface of a pond.

When it found a food-smeared wrapper and flapped down to the grass to investigate it, I inched to within a few meters. It watched intently, its eyes darting to the other raven occasionally – not scared, but clearly evaluating me and the degree of threat I represented.

(It’s an unnerving feeling, being evaluated by another species. Like most people, if they’re pressed, I still tend to think of animals as less self-aware than I am. I’ve learned to make exceptions in the case of parrots, yet, even for me, the first realization that a species has a degree of sentience that overlaps with humanity’s is a humbling and profound experience. Science fiction is always talking about first contact with an alien species, but, for some of us, that moment has already happened.)

In the end, I backed away, acknowledging the raven’s right to examine its spoils in peace. But we stood watching from a more respectful distance for at least half an hour. Then a busboy came out from the restaurant with some garbage, and the ravens flew away.

Over the years, I’ve seen ravens several more times around the greater Vancouver area. Once, I saw them scavenging at an outdoor patio at the Student Union Building at the University of British Columbia – a scene that tourists, I thought, would pay good money to see. I tried getting pictures myself, but the ravens were camera-shy, and would start away whenever I raised the camera to my eye.

Another time, I saw two ravens at the same Skytrain station – possibly the same ones. The railway cut is both a dumping ground for the garbage of the east end and home to hundreds of squirrels and small creatures, so it would be an easy source of food for the ravens, once they learned to keep clear of the trains and rapid transit line (It’s not true that ravens can’t hunt; they simply won’t bother if an easier food supply is available). At the time, I was going through the worst period of my life, and the unexpected site boosted my spirits considerably.

I’m not a birder, but I always notice birds far more than other people. When a red-tailed hawk has staked out a section of highway and is waiting for roadkill, I notice. I can tell you about the social structure of young crows when they first leave the nest, and where all crows roost at night in the area. And once, I spent far too much of early summer watching seagulls raise chicks on a flat, weed-covered roof in Yaletown when I was supposed to be writing a manual.

Yet, of all the local species, ravens fascinate me the most. That’s why I dislike the collective noun for a group of ravens: an unkindness. For me, sighting a raven is far from an unkindness. It’s a surprise gift, and the encounter always leaves me unexpectedly buoyed.

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Free Geek Vancouver

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, environmentalism, Free Geek, Free Software, freesoftware, Personal, recycling, technology, Uncategorized, Vancouver on June 19, 2007| 2 Comments »

In part of my never ending efforts to get out of the house for more than my daily exercise, last night I went to a meeting of the local Linux Users Group at the new Free Geek warehouse just off Main Street in Vancouver. I went away more convinced than ever that Free Geek is one of the more innovating activist groups about town.

Free Geek Vancouver, whose origins I’ve written about professionally, is the first Canadian implementation of an idea that originated in Portland, Oregon. Basically, the idea is to combine the recycling of computer equipment with education and the promotion of free software. For a nominal fee, the group will recycle computer equipment, taking care that it is disposed of ethically – and not just dumped in landfill or shipped to a developing nation where recovery of the raw materials becomes a health hazard to those who undertake it. Higher end computers are refurbished and loaded with free software like Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org and sold or donated to charities and other needy groups. Volunteers can also work with Free Geek for a set number of hours in order to get a computer of their own.

Officially, the group is run by consensus. However, if David Repa and Ifny LaChance, the two Free Geekers to whom I’ve talked the most are typical – and they seem to be — I’d say that it’s equally fuelled by apparently limitless supplies of enthusiasm and energy – to say nothing of a talent for principled promotion. Recently, for example, the group turned down coverage in a national newspaper because the journalist wanted to do a stereotypical article focusing on poor people who had benefited from the group’s services. Believing the story would violate the confidentiality in which they pride themselves, the group refused. Of course, with the coverage they are getting in the local media, they hardly needed the exposure, but many groups wouldn’t have resisted the temptation to compromise for the sake of publicity.

And the group is resourceful, too. What other group would turn having one of their members stopped with a bicycle cart full of computers on the way back from a client into an opportunity to enlist the local police department as supporters?

At the same time, the group is far from humorless. So far as I’m concerned, a group that claims to prefer “catalyst” and “primordial ooze” instead “founder” is refreshing in its refusal to take itself too seriously. The same humor is found in the movement’s slogan, “Helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the third millennium.”

Besides the resourcefulness and outlook of the people involved, what I like best is the way that Free Geek combines two activist groups that traditionally have little contact. Too often, social activists never think to apply their convictions to the software they use, and geeks never think of applying their equally high ethical standards outside of computing.

For over a year, I’ve been writing about the Free Software Foundation’s efforts to bridge these gaps, and I’ve even made some attempts to help in this effort myself, notably in an article called “Free software!” for the New Internationalist. Now, in Free Geek, I’ve found another group interested in doing the same.

I’ll need to think about it, but I’m seriously thinking that one of the ways I’ll be getting out of the house more is as a volunteer. At the very least, I’ll be sending a cheque once I recover from the shock of paying taxes on my sole proprietorship.

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